Rockman 2: Dreams of Madness
by Maelgrim
Summary: Novelization of the 1988 Famicom game Rockman 2: Dr. Wily no Nazo. Sequel to my 1999 story Rockman: the Robot War.
1. Introduction and Dramatis Personae

**R O C K M A N : D R E A M S O F M A D N E S S **

A TALE OF ROCKMAN

written by Ben Roberts

**Cast of Characters**

_Doctor Thomas Xavier_ _Light_-benevolent roboticist, creator of Rock and Roll

_Doctor Willam Albert_ _Wily_-cousin of Dr. Light and nemesis of Rockman

_Rockman_-android 001, assistant to Dr. Light, champion against chaos

_Roll_-android 002, Rock's "female" counterpart, assistant to Dr. Light

_Metalman_-laboroid 009, modified lumberjack robot

_Airman_-laboroid 010, modified waste disposal and wind-tunnel operation robot

_Bubbleman_-laboroid 011, modified sub-marine exploration robot

_Quickman_-laboroid 012, modified super-sonic test robot

_Clashman_-laboroid 013, ground disruption robot

_Flashman_-laboroid 014, law enforcement robot

_Heatman_-laboroid 015, modified waste disposal robot

_Woodman_-laboroid 016, bio-mechanical interface prototype droid

_Docman_-emulation robot with a burning hatred for Rockman and his own creator

**Setting:** _20XX A.D._

_Dr. Light's_ _lab_--Neo Tokyo, Japan

_Skull Castle, mark 2_--Himalayan Mountain range in Nepal (Asia)

_Metalman's Domain_--Shirow Cybernetics laboroid construction factory in Fujiyama City (Japan)

_Airman's Domain_--Nuclear testing facility in Juneau (North America)

_Bubbleman's Domain_--Continental Water Purification Plant #5 (Africa)

_Quickman's Domain_--World Comm Tower #27 in Olsberg, Germany (Central Europe)

_Clashman's Domain_--Sydney International Space Port (Australia)

_Flashman's Domain_--San Salvador Maximum Security Detention Center (Central America)

_Heatman's Domain_--Geothermal Power Plant in Union City, Antarctica

_Woodman's Domain_--Treeborg Jungle Research Center in India (Asia)

**Author's Note:** This tale--_Dreams of Madness_--marks the second installment of my Rockman-based trilogy _The Wily Wars_. It should be noted that the original sub-title to the game is actually "Dr. Wily's Riddle" (another translation is "The Mystery of Dr. Wily"). However, having established the tone that I have in _Rockman: the Robot War_, I felt that a darker, less cliché title would be more suited to my tale of Dr. Wily's second, desperate bid for power.

I will make the assertion that I did before that not all of the material in this story is 100% accurate as according to official Capcom Rockman canon. I suspect that Keiji Inafune would be appalled at the direction I have taken his creation. For one thing, Rockman is supposed to be a little boy robot who refers to himself as "boku" (Japanese for "I"--used informally by younger males). He is also supposed to be a robot, and not an "android" as depicted in my story.

The terms "laboroid" and "androbot" are used fairly interchangeably within the story. Both refer to robots who were meant for heavy industrial or military work, etc... "Laboroid" is an official Capcom term, while "androbot" is my own invention--a mix between "android" and "robot," implying something that is more than one but less than the other.

Dr. Light and Dr. Wily's real Japanese names are Dr. Thomas Right and Dr. Albert W. Wily. I got confused. Sorry. I've written one whole book using the names I knew before, and I don't intend to change them now.

Thanks to the countless fans over the years who have sent weekly e-mails clamoring for a sequel. Here it is.

--Ben Roberts, February 11, 2010 (technically, 20XX—how awesome is that?)

ii


	2. Prologue

**Act 1: Dreams**

**Prologue**

The crowded streets of Hong Kong bustled with activity.

A press of human bodies writhed against itself, each person frantic to get to his own destination—each equally sure that his own personal mission was of utmost importance. A granfalloon noisy chaos butted its collective head against itself, making no progress whatsoever. Humanity pushed itself through the spaces in its own city and between the cracks in its monumental buildings.

Above the noisome mesh of limbs and voices, a net of moving steel and silcon hovered—sometimes jutting down into the press like a hypodermic needle, sometimes rising up from within like a malfunctioning prosthetic. Sundry antennae sprouted from the backs of the metallic swarm, each relaying messages on its own encryption wavelength.

Some were mediabots, designed to search for anything newsworthy and to report back to their human journalists. Others—loud commercial 'droids—shrieked carefully-tailored commercial slogans in English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese, taking credit account numbers and distributing commerce sites on cyberspace. Dark spy 'droids drifted quietly in between their ostentatious comrades to follow unsuspecting businessmen.

Seamlessly integrated, the weave of steel and flesh. Their dance so perfect it might have been choreographed, none would suspect that the two halves of the city were anything other than symbiotic. As if nothing could disrupt the balance.

As if there had never been a Robot War.

Mechanical carapaces reflected the smog-smothered ruby light that bled from the setting sun in the west. Behind a forest of towering space-scrapers perched above an undergrowth of smaller, older buildings, the natural sun retreated. The eastern sector of the city had already fallen into the artifical twilight of buzzing neon illumination. Bars, clubs, theaters, restaurants and store fronts all flung their light into the smoke and mist of the evening.

Chun-Yuen Loeng strolled through the demi-light, easily threading his way through the pell-mell. The bronze buttons that dotted the front of his dark blue Hong Kong civil police uniform jacket reflected the erratic light of the city's neon second-sun. A deep slash promising a permanent scar peeked from underneath the hem of his right sleeve with each step.

He didn't mind; as far as Chun-Yuen was concerned, the injury was a badge of honor. Besides, better a scar than a robotic hand—especially when robots had been responsible for the injury in the first place. When the machines in his patrol district had malfunctioned last year, his standard-issue stun baton had been little enough defense. In protecting the fleeing workers in the neuro-chip plant on B block, his right hand had nearly been severed.

These days he carried a tactical-issue light laser rifle, purchased at his own expense with the compensatory payment for sustaining an injury in the line of duty. The weapon—as much as his officer's badge—smoothed a path for him amongst the din and crowd.

Chun-Yuen let his gaze slide back and forth across the patchwork of light and shadows. His patrol had been uneventful so far, but vigilance was his constant responsibility.

_Hm?_ The officer slowed his pace and stopped near the entrance to an alley. Though few places in the city were ever truly dark, the penumbra that clutched this narrow space between buildings threatened the need of Chun-Yuen's scarce-used flashlight.

There, half-crouched in a rare shadow, a human form staggered.

Bent double, as if with agony, it shivered. Chun-Yuen flipped the safety off his rifle and slowly moved forward—drug addicts could be unpredictable in their response to law enforcement, and the officer had no intention of surviving the robot riots just to be knifed by some junkie.

"Hello," he called. As he drew closer, the other man's features became clearer. An unruly mop of raven-hued hair topped a face obscured behind filthy hands and matted by a dark, coagulated substance that looked like blood. The last rays of the setting sun stained the figure in sanguine shades. The man didn't answer Chun-Yuen's greeting.

He he been assaulted? Impossible! Chun-Yuen himself had patrolled this area not five minutes ago and left a roving patrol-bot in the area. Any disturbance would surely have tripped the machine's alert systems. Anything as noisy or unruly as an assault would be difficult to hide from the sensitive patrol-bot.

He tapped the earpiece the connected him to his small network of patrol-bots, and received several confirmation beeps in different tones. All twelve reported in their standard "no problem here" pattern. Chun-Yuen frowned and quickened his pace. He was within a few steps of the unfortunate man, now.

"Hey there. Are you okay?" he asked.

No response, again. The man continued to shiver. Chun-Yuen tapped the top button on his coat twice to activate the medical-response team posted to this area, and absently noted that the black, American-style biker's jacket that the man wore was torn in many places and stained with more than merely dust and age. What _was_ that he was sitting on? A riot shield? Maybe the man had stolen it from a downed officer during the Robot War.

Chun-Yuen's brow furrowed. "I'm a police officer. Nobody can hurt you now. Tell me what happened. Were you attacked?"

The man's head jerked up, and a pair of battered sunglasses toppled from their precarious perch on his forehead and clattered to the ground. Chun-Yuen's eyes narrowed. Was that a glint of metal he had seen between the folds of the man's jacket? Perhaps this was no simple junkie—a weapon _and_ a riot shield pointed more towards one of the anarchists that had taken hold of the city in the days that followed the onset of the recent riots.

He hardened his voice. "Stand up slowly, with your hands above your head. If you are badly injured, tell me now so that the medical teams can alert the hospital." Once more, no response. He repeated himself in English, and then in Mandarin in case the man was a citizen of the mainland.

The derelict began to chuckle in a low, weird tone. Chun-Yuen raised his rifle and crooked his elbow slightly, speaking into the transmitter at his wrist. "This is officer Loeng, reporting from the corner of Lok Ku and Tang, behind the Old Tai Shing building—"

Abruptly, the man exploded into motion, interrupting Chun-Yuen's report.

Chun-Yuen fell back into a defensive kneel, his rifle leveled at the man's chest. The man sprang out of his crouch and stood tall, arm pointed at the Chun-Yuen. The officer almost smirked—it was an empty hand. This guy must be pretty wasted to not even realize he wasn't even holding his gun.

Too quick to be human, the man dropped and grabbed the silvery dish upon which he'd been leaning. Sure enough, it looked like a riot shield, complete with the dark tinted slot through which one could see to the other side.

"Drop your weapon!" Chun-Yuen barked. As the man reached beneath his jacket, the officer squeezed the trigger. A barely-audible whine combined with a deep hiss, and the air tore away from the space where the laser beam passed, visible as a burning golden thread in the polluted air.

_What?_

The brick of the wall exploded behind Chun-Yuen: the laser beam had been reflected. The shield's near-perfect chrome color hadn't even been darkened in the spot where his laser had hit. Immediately, the man flung its shield aside and pointed its right arm at Chun-Yuen. This time, it wasn't empty. Chun-Yuen prepared to roll out of the way, but stopped, tense. The man wasn't moving.

Too-bright eyes seemed to glow in the twilight, hawk-blue. They burned—either feverish or drug-addled. In the man's left hand was a long scarf the color of noon sunlight, surprisingly clean in contrast with the rest of him. In his right hand—or rather, enveloping it, Chun-Yuen saw—was a large, bulbous crimson device.

_Shit. A plasma gun_. His adversary had officially graduated from simple anarchist to top-level illegal weapons smuggler. What the hell was going on here? Chun-Yuen's earpice squawked indignantly as twelve patrol bots suddenly abandoned their posts and rushed to investigate his laser-rifle discharge. Overlaid on that was a fugue of other officers' voices, all calling enroute to his location.

Chun-Yuen was both tense and mesmerized—light shifted deep behind the lens at the end of the man's contraband plasma gun. It trembled, as though the man fought an internal battle, and could not decide whether to attack or not.

"Take it easy," Chun-Yuen said, taking care to modulate his voice to non-threatening levels. He lowered the barrel of his own gun a fraction of an inch. "I'm not going to hurt you. See?"

His nose involuntarily wrinkled. Rather than the sour smell of stale sweat, cheap liquor and drug-induced vomit that he had come to expect from such urchins as this, a vaporous miasma that stank of motor oil and an unplaceable, coppery scent filled the alley.

The plasma gun slowly drooped, and the man's eyes focused upon Chun-Yuen, although they did not lose their fever-brightness. The voice that spoke was cracked, grating. Barely human, and weighted with suffering.

"Itaiyo."

Chun-Yuen's mind raced. The man was speaking in a language that was neither Mandarin, Cantonese, English or Korean, and so, unintelligible to the police officer. It had the syllabic sound of Japanese. Chun-Yuen committed the sounds the man had spoken to memory, and said the one phrase he knew in Japanese.

"Watashi wa nihongo o hanashimasen." _I don't speak Japanese._

The man fell forward to his knees, and caught himself from further descent on his hands.

_His hands!_

Chun-Yuen blinked and stifled a gasp. The egg-shaped plasma gun over the man's right arm had disappeared. Now there remained only a metallic crimson gauntlet. Surely he had been wearing no gloves?

"Itaiyo." This time, it was barely a whisper.

"Let me help you," Chun-Yuen suggested, hoping that the tone of his voice would convey his intentions. "You don't look well. That wound on your head—"

There was a flash of silver and crimson fire—a bolt of light in the shadows—and the man had gone as suddenly as the wind. Shield, scarf, and grimy man in the torn jacket had all vanished instantaneously. Chun-Yuen looked over his shoulder and then back at the space the man had occupied.

Not only a contraband weapons smuggler, but also using restricted teleport tech?

The rhythmic stamp of tactical boots marked the arrival of Tam Lei, one of Chun-Yuen's fellow officers. Behind him were half a dozen of Chun-Yuen's own patrol-bots, as well as a miniature swarm of the Tam's.

"Loeng, you okay?" Officer Lei's voice was controlled, but tight with concern.

"Fine," he replied. "Just had a run-in with the weirdest shit I've seen all month, though." As he cancelled medical personnel and emergency officer response through his comlink and sent his patrol bots back to their routes, he recounted the strange events to Tam. As he repeated the strange man's only words, his earpiece chirped with an automatic translation.

"_Itaiyo_. Japanese: _It hurts_. TransLabor Interpretation Services. Thank you."

Tam smirked. "Huh. A drugged-out greaser with military-grade weapons and experimental teleport tech? Pretty far-out. Maybe you saw a ghost, instead!"

Chun-Yuen colored with annoyance for a moment, then chuckled.

"Some ghost," he laughed. "Guess we need to have an exorcist down here."

The rest of the officers joined in the laughter before departing their separate ways, returning to their patrol routes. The alley fell back into a light-hazed shade.

As Chun-Yuen turned his back to finish his own shift, a mournful whistling tune drifted from above the Old Tai Shing building. The hair at the base of his neck stood up, and goosebumps scraped the inside of his uniform sleeves. His scar ached. Despite the rush of bustling citizenry mere meters away, he suddenly felt very alone.

He chuckled again, less certainly. "Yeah . . . some ghost."


	3. Chapter 1: To Poison Sleep

"_Dreams? I'll tell you about dreams, hunter; they're the gate to madness. Look too long upon them and you find that they're looking back at you. There's no profit in trying to sway me with your talk of visions for a better future, X. I know the poison of dreaming, and I'll have no part of it!"_

-Snipe Ariquick: recorded radio communication during the Red Alert Crisis

**Chapter One**

**To Poison Sleep**

"Good afternoon, honored guests. Thank you for joining us today for this special occasion. We hope you enjoy your visit today, but most especially this rare treat. Please look forward to it. To introduce our guest speaker this afternoon is Inafune, the founder of the Robot Museum!"

At the front of a stuffy auditorium, the pool of light cast by the automated gaffer system shifted from a young woman in a blue docent's uniform and cap to the edge of the stage. A fit middle aged man in an expensive but muted suit strode confidently into the light, his back straight.

The light hopped ahead of him a bit, and he did a cartoonish double-take before leaping forward to stay within it. As the soles of his shoes _clicked_ on the treeborg-wooden stage, the spotlight bounced behind him. The man put his hands on his hips, and then wagged an admonishing finger towards the spotlight as the audience groaned and chuckled indulgently.

With the energy of a man half his age, Yoshi Inafune jogged to the podium, his kitschy bit of theater concluded. The audience applauded as he wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief. "Well," he began, "I'm a venture capitalist, not a comedian." This elicited some polite laughter from the crowd, and Inafune smiled winningly.

_Now, quit while you're ahead_, he decided, and mentally crossed out the next two jokes in his introduction. Smoothing his collar, he turned slightly to the left to show off his good side. "Ladies and gentlemen, you have come to our museum today for edification, for leisure, and for some of you," he said with a wink, "because you're here on a school field trip."

Enthusiastic clapping and high-pitched cheers shrilled from the left side of the auditorium. Inafune had to hand it to his PR men; the free admission for school children on school days had actually _doubled_ their profits in the past few months; the little tykes were eager to return with their families on weekends at full price.

"When I first laid out the money to fund the foundation of this establishment, I did so with the hope that others could come to share in the enthusiasm I felt for the developing field of robotics, and to look back at the history that made it possible." Most of that was actually true—the audience didn't need to know that Inafune had also taken on the task on a bet with his old business school rival Mori Takemitsu that he couldn't make a dime on such a ridiculous idea.

"In the halls of our fine museum, you've seen the original designs for Thomas Edison's failed mechanical doll. You've seen a working recreation of Jacques de Vaucanson's 18th century eating-duck robot." As Inafune spoke, holograms of each of the exhibits appeared to his left and right. "The robot Maria from Fritz Lang's _Metropolis_, and the first EG-series metool to be produced by LighTech right here in Japan!" As he continued, deep, subtle music had begun to emanate from the microspeakers located in several positions on every seat in the room.

"Every exhibit in this building, whether part of the cinematic history that has so inspired the robotechnicians of today, or our new Robot War Memorial Wing, is a priceless gem of robotics history that stands as testament to the limitless capacity of man's invention!" The music swelled slightly to coincide with his speech. Inafune had long since abandoned his prepared monologue in favor of enthusiastic improvisation.

"Today, my friends, you will have a chance to meet the world's very first robotic hero! Here to help us celebrate the inaugural week of the new memorial wing is a robot who surely needs no further introduction. On loan for a limited time only from LighTech industries, the _magnum opus_ of genius Dr. Thomas Light, the Blue Bomber himself—Rockman!"

The music reached a crescendo as the audience exploded with applause and cheers. From the side of the stage, a humanoid robot in blue armor and helmet leaped forward, landing in a tuck and roll directly besides Yoshi Inafune. As he gained his feet, he lifted his right arm—now converted to a an egg-shaped, plasma buster—braced it with his left, and fired several harmless tracking lasers over the heads of the crowd, made visible by the trace amounts of fog the computerized gaffer system had been slowly emitting over the past few minutes.

The crowd gasped as the lasers were followed by crackling plasma bursts, leaving swirling trails through the thin smoke. Inafune smiled inwardly. Of course, it would have been insane to use real plasma, so his effects 'bots had holographically replicated the effect of a plasma weapon garnered from recordings of Rockman's prior battles.

Rockman lifted his plasma buster, dramatically blew smoke from the end of its barrel, and then gave the crowd a thumbs-up. Their adulation shook the stage and activated the building's sonic dampening system so that the rest of the museum's patrons were not disturbed by the noise.

Inafune clapped Rockman on the shoulder companionably. "I'll leave the stage to you," he said. "Please give our honored guest your full attention," he added with a bow to the audience, and strode once again from the stage. As the robot began to speak, Inafune leaned against a supporting column from the side of the stage and took a deep breath.

Profits this week would be through the roof.

_Tokyo, Japan_

"So, any questions?" Rockman asked, his speech concluded.

Every hand in the audience was raised, along with several voices.

"All right, all right," he chuckled, raising the eyebrows of several audience members. "We'll start here." A thin laser beam projected from the tip of his finger, landing on a young boy in the third row with wild hair. "What's your name young man?"

The boy stood so quickly that he nearly fell. Hastily straightening his blazer and making a belated bow, he stammered, "Shotaro Kitamura, sir. It's an honor, sir! You're the greatest!"

Rockman smiled indulgently. "I'm the one who is honored. But what is your question, young Kitamura?"

"Is it true you take the abilities of robots you destroy?" the boy asked.

Off-stage, Inafune tensed slightly. He had heard that the android was touchy on this subject. However, Rockman smiled ferociously and gave the crowd another thumbs-up. Inafune found himself wondering if the expression had been copied from the old samurai movies starring Toshiro Mifune. "Would you like to see a demonstration?"

The children in the audience went wild. For the next several minutes, Rockman entertained them by destroying several mannequins on-stage with fire, explosives, electricity, whirling blades, and even a salvo of icicle-projectiles. Like the plasma, they were all fake. Inafune was glad that he had insisted on including those subroutines into the stage projectors.

"Who else? Yes, you, little girl." The blue laser beam sought out a little blonde girl in pigtails near the back of the theater.

"Wow, thanks Megaman!" the girl grinned. "I was wondering—what are those bumps on your helmet for?"

Rockman smiled again. "Ah, one of my American fans!" he answered in flawless English. He translated the girl's question into Japanese for the rest of the audience (most of whom already spoke enough English to understand, Inafune would wager), and took his helmet off, revealing a shock of wild raven-colored hair.

"This one here," he indicated a light blue square that protruded an inch from the surface of the midnight-blue metal where his forehead would be, "is a solar energy collector. It's just like the solar panels that power your cars, but instead of using the sun's energy to power an engine, my helmet sends the energy to my plasma buster." He held up his left arm for reference. "The machinery in my 'buster compresses the energy into 'solar bullets' like these." He fired a few more bursts of holographic plasma into the air.

The girl smiled. His answer had been translated instantly in a little earpiece she wore—free of charge today, as ordered by Inafune—and she led the applause.

Now the questions came rapid-fire.

"Do you have a family?" This from a school-aged girl with her family.

"You bet! My sister is named Roll. She's a robot like me, and she keeps house. My dad is Dr. Light, the man who created me. We live happily together here in Tokyo."

"What was it like to save the world?"

"Did you ever get scared?"

"How many robots have you destroyed?"

Inafune smiled as Rockman fielded each question with ease and congeniality. After several minutes, the blue robot held up a halting hand. "You've been a fantastic audience, but I only have time for one last question. How about we give an adult a chance, kids?"

The blue laser pointer settled on a man in a navy-colored suit near the front.

"Thank you," the man said, bowing. "I wonder if you might tell us a little about the trial that's been in all the news these past few months?"

_That was supposed to be a taboo subject_.Inafune turned to call for security, but Rockman shrugged. "Are you kidding me? I may be just a robot, but even _I_ have more of a heart than our lawyers! Do you know what they'd do to me if I talked about the LighTech trial? I'd be demoted to toaster duty in a picosecond!"

The crowd laughed.

"Thank you all, honored guests," Rockman called as he waved graciously. "Work hard to achieve your dreams, and never give up hope for a peaceful world!" Applause continued long after he had walked off the stage.

Strangely expressionless, the robot stood stock still in the shadows. Inafune took a hesitant step forward. After a moment, he rolled his eyes at his own timidity and cleared his throat.

"Good job out there," he said. "You know, as the owner of the museum, I think I may be a bigger fan than anybody out there. I'm actually star-stricken, here."

"Wow," Rockman answered, breaking into a grin. He held out his hand to shake. "It's a real pleasure meeting my number one fan, sir. Especially when he turns out to be such a luminary!"

Inafune enthusiastically pumped the robot's arm up and down. "To dreams for the future."

"Dreams," the robot repeated, with a nod.

With that, the blue-armored robot hunter-turned-superstar compressed into a bolt of blue fire and teleported away.

_Palma, Spain_

Six months.

Dr. Javier Delgato tapped a stylus on his card-thin datapad and waited. Outside, the rain would be hissing against the walls of the Palma Maximum Security Asylum for the Criminally Insane. This time of year, rain came as often as not, while the flood of tourists dropped to a trickle.

Javier didn't mind; it left more time for him to enjoy the Castillo de Bellver without the obnoxious honking of American tourists or the incessant chittering of their servbots. Perhaps he would take his wife to dinner tonight, and they could stroll afterwards in the shadows of the old town wall between the great cathedral and the Parc de la Mar.

_Focus_. The shift wasn't over yet. As always at the end of each day, Dr. Delgato had one last visit to make. Brown eyes flicked down to the information scrolling by on his datapad. As usual, acetylcholine levels and glutamate levels were wildly out of balance. Dopamine and serotonin were within normal limits, however.

A slight whirring sound signaled that the myriad of shock-dampening, radio-blocking, sound-absorbent concentric cubes that made up this particular prison had almost finished their alignment so as to let the physician enter.

Javier fiddled with the small cube-shaped toy in his pocket and frowned at the results of the latest magnetic resonance holography. Tapping the datapad, he brought up a floating hologram of a human brain, key areas highlighted.

_Hm_. The corpus callosum still had that troublesome longitudinal shift, and tiny molecule-sized areas of infarction still dotted Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Of course, after months of molecular reconstructive therapy and experimental neuron regeneration, it was a minor miracle that only these few anomalies remained.

_Ping_. A green indicator light flashed on the wall, and the two guards stationed on either side of the cell door made a show of checking Delgato's fingerprint, retina scan and voice analysis.

The physician had objected to the measures in his first few weeks of treating his patient, but one of the guards—a man named Manuel with the build of a weightlifter—had only growled, "Hey, my _brother_ was almost killed in the riots. He has a bionic leg now."

The confirmation of his identity complete, Javier stepped through the consecutive mag-locked doors as they opened one by one until they finally revealed the intricate prison cell of the man the United Earth government had recently officially deemed the most dangerous man alive.

Dr. William Albert Wily sat on the floor of his cell, cross-legged.

His cell was a large white cube—perhaps thirty feet in every direction. In one corner were a toilet, sink and shower. In the other corner was a table with rounded edges and a bench large enough for one person. For the first few months, Dr. Wily had been on twenty-four hour suicide watch, which meant that at least one staff member had been constantly in the cell with him in order to assure that the infamous German robotechnician-turned-megalomaniac didn't try to bash his brains out on the sink lip or on the table surface.

Recently, at the criminal's request, he had been provided with certain toys. A panel of several psychologists, psychiatrists, and military operatives had reviewed the requests and finally agreed to accede to letting Dr. Wily have one type of toy—deemed harmless after weeks of analysis and deliberation.

Over three hundred small Rubik's Cubes sat arranged in various patterns around the room, their faces twisted this way and that to form a variety of patterns. Javier was sure that the patterns had some meaning, but had yet to decipher them. A team of Swiss mathematicians had been working for weeks on decoding any possible formula from the arrangement of the colors, but Dr. Wily changed them every day, with a caprice and single-mindedness that baffled his captors.

Javier reminded himself that—even insane—Dr. Wily still possessed genius on an order the world had rarely seen.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Wily," Javier tapped the upper corner of his datapad to close the floating hologram. "How are you feeling today?"

Dr. Wily stood slowly and stretched. "Old," he answered. "I get lost in thought, and when I finally come back to myself, my damn joints are so stiff I can barely move."

"What do you get lost thinking of?"

Wily walked to his table and sat on the stationary bench, hands clasped. "Many things. I found myself wondering today how I might use the surface tension one finds in a bubble of soap to create an airtight vessel for space travel."

"Breathe normally," Javier advised as he stepped closer. His datapad ran an automatic diagnostic of Wily's vital signs, electrolyte levels, and neurotransmitter levels through sensors that had been implanted beneath the prisoner's skin upon his arrival six months ago. "Are you planning on taking a trip, William?"

Dr. Wily's brow crinkled almost imperceptibly at the use of his first name, but he shook his head. "No. You know as well as I that I'll be here for the rest of my life, Javier. At least until the execution."

Dr. Delgato shook his head. "We've been over this. If I can provide proof of your complete neural rehabilitation, then your sentence will be commuted. Only the most stubborn still believe that you were in your right mind during the Robot War. A few individuals have even contributed handsomely to the funding needed for the therapy."

Wily grunted. "You mean the X foundation. You don't even know my mysterious benefactor's name."

"Mr. X prefers anonymity," Javier agreed. "That's not so unusual for charitable organizations."

"Extraterrestrial mining rovers," Wily said, by way of answer. He ran a hand distractedly over the bald space between the twin shocks of white hair that started at his temples and met at the back of his head. "Before my . . . my breakdown. Our—that is—Tom's company was beginning to develop technology for the extraterrestrial mining colonies. We had been designing robots, but I thought that if human miners had a safe, cheap way to get around, they might not need to rely on robots."

"Humanity's autonomy from artificial labor means a great deal to you," Delgato observed, with a hint of a question at the end.

For a moment, the Castillian neurologist thought he could see something inscrutable and hard cross Dr. Wily's features. If it had been there, however, it was as transient as the patterns he made in his ineffable constellations of Rubik's cubes.

"As I have said, it was my intent—before I inadvertently re-wired my own brain at the molecular level—to serve as a cautionary example to humanity so that the path we have chosen does not lead to our ruin." Wily took a deep breath. "But we were saved from robots _by_ a robot, so nothing is proved. And if what you tell me is true, society is more dependent upon machines than ever."

Delgato fiddled distractedly with the calibration settings on his datapad. "Not entirely," he answered. "There are those who have learned from your warning—however misguided."

"I don't mean those short-sighted bigots of the Human Supremacy League," Wily spat.

"There are others," Javier replied. "Less extreme." The X foundation—in addition to its other endeavors—had been a leading force for human employment opportunities since Wily's imprisonment. At their mysterious chairman's suggestion, the foundation had been very proactive in its protection of human rights in the workplace without resorting to the reactionary rhetoric or violence of other pro-human groups such as the late HSL.

"So, what news am I allowed to hear today?" Wily asked.

Javier considered remaining silent; the information he had been cleared to give Wily seemed calculated to provoke a reaction. He breathed in and out once before answering. "The trial against LighTech Incorporated begins in earnest next week; the last preliminary hearing was today."

"I see." Wily's tone was completely neutral—carefully so, Delgato thought. "That is to be expected, I suppose. Has the prosecution added any new charges?"

"Destruction of property to the nth degree," the Castillian answered. "Please be silent for a moment while I finish these new scans." The datapad vibrated almost imperceptibly as it slowly built a new holographic model of the German roboticist's brain.

Several moments passed in silence. Javier did not tell Wily that LighTech's main competitor, Sennet Robotics, had been wildly successful in its new marketing campaign of "berserk-proof" robots, touted as "guaranteed to shut down before they can counteract their factory-preset programming." Though no direct mention of the LighTech robot masters that had led the riots of six months past was made in the advertisements, the underlying message was clear.

LighTech's robot masters nearly destroyed the world. _Our_ product is safer than that.

"Your neurotransmitter levels are better," Javier announced.

Dr. Wily made a face. "Yes, but I see that I still have some dead space in Wernicke's area, and my hemispheres aren't perfectly aligned."

"Still," Delgato pressed. "Progress." He withdrew the Rubik's cube he had brought today and placed it on the table. "Another present."

Wily's face broke into a childish grin, and Dr. Delgato reminded himself once again that no matter the atrocities this man had committed while insane, the damage done to his psyche both during his breakdown and in the following therapy had reduced him in some ways to the level of a preadolescent.

"It's the weekend now, so I won't be checking in for a few days. You know my assistant Consuela."

Wily waved a dismissive hand.

"Is there anything else you'd like to speak to me about today, Dr. Wily?"

Silence hung in the air for several seconds as the German roboticist feverishly twisted and turned the faces of the multicolored cube until it had reached a configuration to his satisfaction. Just as Javier shifted his weight in preparation for leaving the room, Wily's voice cut through the air.

It was clearer and surer than Javier had ever heard.

"I left my son to die."

"Excuse me?" Javier flicked at his datapad and scanned the readouts, glancing up at Dr. Wily every few seconds. "Your son? Our records indicate—"

"I built him in my madness. All he wanted to do was to make me happy. He was a work of flawed genius, my son." The tracer tracking Wily's acetylcholine levels jagged and bobbed like a drunk weaving his way though a crowd. "I made him more human in mind and heart than any puppet Tom ever put strings to. And I left him to die for spite. Prideful spite."

Dr. Delgato swallowed. This was the closest Dr. Wily had ever come to speaking of specific actions he had taken during the Robot War of six months ago. Deglato—like all other members of this facility—was under strict orders to record any information Wily might give about his tactical plans during the war. After all, intelligence indicated that he had hidden several other redoubts across the world. And while it was true that not everybody still believed Wily entirely culpable for his misguided actions during the war, there were even fewer who did not privately worry about the possibility of robotic sleeper cells Wily might have programmed in his madness.

"I sometimes dream of him, you know." There was something horrible about the deadpan matter-of-fact way Wily spoke. Javier found himself suppressing a shudder.

"Do you feel like talking about it?"

"You couldn't possibly understand. Tom might, though. Blues . . ." Wily shook his head. "But that's been taken care of."

"What is Blues?" Javier asked. "Do you mean Rockman, the blue robot?"

"I'm finished speaking," Dr. Wily announced. Javier found himself reminded of a suddenly recalcitrant toddler in need of a nap. "I ramble sometimes. Thank you for bringing me a new cube, Dr. Delgato. They help me to clear my mind and make sense of the world around me."

Javier nodded and walked back through the consecutive doors without further conversation. As the first began to hiss closed behind him, he could hear Wily muttering.

"So how is he, doc?" the second guard asked as Javier repeated the security clearance process (also required for departure). "Still dreaming of the world kneeling at his feet?"

Delgato shook his head bemusedly. "I think it's best for all of us that we know as little as possible about that man's dreams," he answered.

_Tokyo, Japan_

In her dreams, Elizabeth Angelwood was a giant.

She ambled amongst the miniature buildings like a _daikaiju_ of films nearly forgotten. Invulnerable, she shrugged off the laser fire and missile salvos launched by the army of mechanized horrors swarming across the city like metallic beetles. With each careless step of her gargantuan feet she crushed dozens of the robotic aggressors.

Now she was in the center of town and found herself gazing back and forth between two buildings. One sat in the green hills at the edge of the megalopolis, a small white house, domed like an observatory. Beside the front door stood a ridiculous pink mailbox that hadn't been used for decades. Though it looked like a simple cottage, Bess knew that multiple spacious basements lay beneath it.

The other building sprawled over the space of several city blocks, a study in right angles and austere design. Hundreds of uniform windows reflected the light of the explosions that dotted the city.

The first building she had come to regard as home over the past several months. The second was at best a place of ambivalence, conjuring visions of hundreds of faces twisted in scorn at her clumsy grammar and obvious accent. Though she loved her time in math and science class, and her history teacher was a gentle, patient woman, every day Bess looked forward to leaving the second building for the first.

Now the little house was besieged by robots, and Bess broke into a run, heedless of the cars she crushed or the buildings she toppled in her haste. One robot in particular made her blood run cold. Grey with crimson boots and gauntlets, its head was a perfect red sphere, surmounted by wickedly sharp circular scissor blades.

As she drew closer, the robot grew larger—or was she shrinking?

When she had reached the house, the robot stood several stories tall, while she had reverted to her natural height of just over four feet. Her heart hammered against her ribs, as she cast about wildly for sight of the house's inhabitants.

"Looking for someone?" the robot sneered. Its voice was human—far too human in its subtle cruelty.

Caught in a giant hand, Bess struggled, willing herself to wake up. She opened her mouth to scream—

"Bess!"

Her world dissolved into a confusion of tangled linen and knotted fleece. An inchoate bellow still lingered at the back of her throat, unvoiced. Somewhere, soft yellow light labored to pierce the stuffy dimness of her smothering prison. Frantic, she tried to kick free.

Large hands held her still, and she struggled. However, the haze of her dream-turned nightmare was already fading. Belatedly, she recognized her father's voice and the familiar stars-and-planets print of her bed sheets tangled over her legs and across her face.

She reached up carefully with her free hand and pulled the sheets off of her head. Static crackled in her hair and made it stand on end as the sheet fell in a crumpled pile by her side. Sitting on the side of her bed with an expression of worry was her father.

Zachary Angelwood—"Snap" to his friends—was a man in his early forties with short, shaggy blond hair and a stubbly goatee. His rumpled grey T-shirt and ratty sweat pants told Bess that her father had been in bed. _It must be late_.

"Dreams, darlin'?" he asked. Between each other, they still spoke English. Bess now treasured the Australian twang that she had once taken for granted as part of the scenery.

Of course, that had been before the riots leveled their house in Sydney.

Bess nodded fiercely. "I was a giant, and everything was going fine. I was—" she stopped guiltily.

Her father raised an eyebrow.

"I was going to stomp my school," she continued, squaring her shoulders defiantly. "Stomp it all to bits!" That last part had been more vehement than she had meant it to be. She blushed.

A smirk tugged at the corner of Snap's mouth. "Were you, now?"

"Yeah, but then Cu—well, _he_ showed up and grew big, and I got really small, and he was attacking the house! Only I couldn't do anything because he grabbed me."

"Shhh." Snap raised a finger to his lips as Bess's dream tumbled out in a rush. "You'll wake your sister. It's okay. He's gone now. Rock took care of it."

"I know," Bess folded her arms. "It was a _stupid_ dream. I don't know why I keep having it."

Snap's expression clouded, and he ruffled his daughter's hair. "_A dream has power to poison sleep_," he said.

Bess frowned and pulled her knees up to her chin. "That doesn't sound like something you'd normally say, Dad."

Snap smiled ruefully. "Nah. Roll was readin' some book by an old poet the other day and said it to me. It's been kickin' around in my head since then, an' it just sorta popped out."

Bess turned this over in her mind.

"She's thinking about Rock," she announced. "She wonders if he's been dreaming, too."

"I'll bet he has," Snap answered. "Remember, Doc said he was goin' to research why Rock had been dreamin'."

"I hope he has good dreams," Bess yawned. Before her father could answer, she asked, "Why can't we go back to Sydney?"

Snap's smile congealed. "We've been over this. Do you really _want_ to go back?"

His daughter plucked at the pile of sheets distractedly. "I guess not. But it's so lonely here. And learning Japanese is _hard_. Everybody at school speaks English anyway, but they pretend they don't when I get confused and forget how to say things."

"I know," Snap said. "We'll make it work. Things will be easier."

"Can we go to the Robot Museum on Saturday?" Bess stifled another yawn. The corners of her eyes itched with sleep. "Julie says they've got a new part with all sorts of stuff about Rock and Dr. Light!"

"But you already live with them," Snap chuckled.

"_Please_?" Bess fought to keep the whine from her voice, but it was hard when she was so tired.

"Go to sleep," her father answered. "We'll see about it in the mornin'."

"That's just a grown-up way of saying 'no'," the girl grumped.

"We'll see," Snap repeated, tucking her in.

Within minutes, Bess had fallen back asleep.

_Chile_

The wind moaned against an invisible barrier.

High in the Andes mountains, the blackened foundations of a massive building jutted from the scarred ground like broken fangs. Radioactive fog slithered around carbon-scored steel I-beams and over unrecognizable heaps of metal melted to slag by punishing nuclear fire. Where once had stood a madman's fusion of fortress and factory, now only sterile death remained.

Here and there, the dark pits yawned, leading to the ruins of multiple subterranean levels that had once been the most secure redoubt of Skull Castle. Footprints clearly marked the dust that accumulated over months; a specially designated UE reconnaissance squad had thoroughly investigated the area a week past.

The footprints led this way and that, skirting piles of scrap that had once been robots—instantly and permanently disabled by the electromagnetic pulse that had accompanied the tactical nuclear strike on Skull Castle at the end of the Robot War. They covered nearly every inch of the underground complex, stopping only at the ventilation shafts.

Exiting through the powerful molecular-stasis shield that prevented radioactive hell from creeping down the mountains and into the ecosystem, the investigation team never discovered the deepest chamber.

Accessible only through a coolant drainage conduit and masked by the rubble of countless destroyed robots, the massive room lay in stygian darkness. The stagnant air was nearly smoggy with oily fumes and fine rock dust. The atmosphere would have taxed even the million-dollar exofilters the exploratory team had worn, had they found their way to this hidden place.

Of course, none of these trifles troubled the room's inhabitant, as he had no need for breath, and could see perfectly in the dark.

Crouched amidst the mechanized corpses of the robots he had cannibalized for servomotors, nanotransistor assemblies, and raw material, Docman appeared as Dante might have imagined had Virgil taken him on a tour of Automata Hell. Syntheflesh lacerated by the berserk attacks of his hated enemy hung in shreds from his ruined face. One eye still functioned; the other still required delicate photoreceptive cells that could not be salvaged from any of the robots Docman had found roaming the deepest halls of Skull Castle, shielded from the electromagnetic pulse above by tons of granite and steel. Only a single arm was functional out of his four limbs; the other had been torn completely off, leaving a stump bristling with wires and crushed gear assemblies. Both legs had been broken and twisted so badly that Docman's auto-repair system couldn't possibly compensate.

In short, he had dragged himself wherever he needed to go; he had no alternatives.

The microfusion reactor that provided his operational power was still weak. he could only stay "awake" for two hours per day—fewer, if he exerted himself by dragging his ruined body more than a few meters. Still, every day he made progress. He had almost entirely reconstructed a workable left leg chassis; in another month, it would be ready for installation.

In the interim, he dreamed.

Everyday when he powered down, he dreamed of his enemies. Rather, he ran complex simulations in his mind, experimenting with the outcome of each in endless degrees of variance. Some were very nearly identical replays of his fateful battle against his hated adversary Rockman. Others were complex revenge scenarios in which he happily murdered his creator .

All of them drove him further into a recursive loop of failed logic gates that humans would call madness. His diagnostic programs had warned him daily of the dangers he flouted when indulging in such behavior. After the first month, he had deactivated his diagnostic programs.

_There_. With his good arm, he finished placing the last gear in the assembly he had been building for the past month. One of a group of tiny interconnected gears that spread out from one another like a spider web, this one had been taken from the gyroscopic balancing system of a metool that had wandered too close to Docman's lair for its own good.

Summoning up enough energy to destroy another robot was always a taxing affair, but Docman calculated that the risk was easily worth the reward. So long as he returned the to the safety of his chamber and stayed hidden afterwards, the chances of being found and destroyed by any of the few remaining sentry bots that still stalked this forsaken underworld were slim.

_Revenge_. That was the thought that drove him—the spark that fueled his power cells more efficiently than his wounded microfusion reactor. Though it might take him a decade, he would emerge from this purgatory stronger of will and of body than he had gone in. And when that day came, he would kill Rockman and Dr. Wily.

The thought activated a satisfaction subroutine, and Docman allowed himself the indulgence of an actual audible chuckle, forced through malfunctioning vocoders. Of course, now he would need to sleep, to restore the energy wasted by that choice.

_No matter. Sleep gives me time to plan_.

Deep beneath the ruins of a lunatic's ambition, a mechanical revenant closed its lone lambent eye and slipped into dreams of madness.

_Seattle, United States_

Mikhael Sergeyevich Cossack set down the diagnostic datapad and stretched.

A tall, solidly-built man in his early thirties, his upswept ginger hair and arched eyebrows gave him the appearance of constant mild annoyance. In the past moth, he had grown out a shaggy beard and moustache. Combined with his growling Slavic r's—despite his rapidly improving English—the only word to describe his general demeanor was "fierce."

Since taking his father's post as head of cybernetics design at Sennet Robotics, he had been working hours that his Japanese counterpart would have enthusiastically endorsed. Six months since he had taken a true weekend—Cossack nearly winced at the thought.

"Liszt," he commanded, and the lab's audio system whirred slightly as it randomly accessed a file from the appropriate subdirectory. Within a few seconds, the strains of Liszt's _Second Mephistopheles Waltz_ floated through the lab. Dr. Cossack smiled at the irony of it.

The prototype robot laid out in front of him in various pieces resembled a SWAT police officer. The unfinished model was a study in dull grey with occasional highlights of chrome and bright orange where the ceramic zirconium joint assemblies would insert. Cossack had seen some of the design documents from PR; the final color scheme would be primarily dark blue with some goldenrod highlights in the torso.

The crystal covering the dome of the head and the special flash bulb beneath were Cossack's pride. On his arrival at Sennet Headquarters in Seattle, the first spec requirement documents he had been presented with were those for the then-unnamed security model.

Designed to reduce workload for the overcrowded prison system (primarily in America, although Italy and China both suffered from similar problems), the Enforcer line was able to project a large selective temporary molecular-stasis field, intended for use in riots. Initial specs had called for a permanent plasma buster to be installed on the right arm, but Mikhael had balked. Instead, he had design a low-yield particle compression buster—suitable for use in stunning violent inmates, but safer than a lethal plasma buster.

"Is that Berlioz?" At the west bay doors of the lab stood a tall thin black man, his white lab coat draped over his arm and his polo shirt dotted with droplets of moisture. The umbrella standing next to the door told Cossack that it had been raining again.

"Liszt," he answered. "But still part of the New German School of music. You have a good ear, Dr. St. John."

Dr. Abejide St. John shrugged amiably and walked with a peculiarly graceful stride to stand next to his coworker. As the other robotechnician on the company's Alpha Team here in Seattle, he and Cossack worked together almost constantly. Once a week, Mikhael and his eight-year old daughter Kalinka would have dinner at Abejide's house, where the Nigerian scientist and his wife Bayo would treat them to some of his country's native dishes. Mikhael preferred the meat pies, while Kalinka couldn't get enough of the doughy chin-chin snacks.

"It looks like you have been working again through lunch." St. John chuckled. "Kalinka would disapprove. Perhaps you and I shall go eat some cheeseburgers."

Dr. Cossack's smiled reached all the way to his green eyes. "I would like that, my friend. Come, see what I have done."

Abejide made a show of leaning over the completed endoskeleton and glancing at the complex circuitry underlying the flash bulb that would potentiate the cascade leading to molecular stasis. "Truly you are an artist," he observed. "Your talents were wasted while you sulked in that Siberian castle."

Cossack tensed. The "sulking" his friend meant was, of course, his year of mourning for his wife—killed in a senseless traffic accident. A hovertaxi's antigrav unit had failed above the light where she had been waiting, and her tiny fuel-efficient vehicle had been crushed like tinfoil.

Of course, St. John had meant no slight by the remark—Mikhael understood perfectly well that English was a foreign a language to the Yoruba-speaking Nigerian as it was to himself. He forced a grin. "Hardly a castle, Abejide. More like a summer home for my father's retirement."

"As you say." St. John reached out with a long, probing index finger. "This piece here—why have you linked it to the nanotransistor slave-circuit for the bulb? It seems that it would slow down conduction—can you afford that many ohms' worth of resistance? Surely, the flash assembly needs more power?"

Cossack shook his head. "No. This is critical in maintaining the—" he groped for the English word. "Ah . . . _selectivity_ of the stasis field. Else our Enforcer would find himself trapped just like the rioting inmates. You see?"

Dr. St. John's smile was radiant on his face. "Genius, Mikhael. I see . . . it actually _saves_ energy by diverting power from the generated stasis field back into the selectivity module. This surely deserves a _double_ cheeseburger."

As the pair left the laboratory, Dr. Cossack spared a backwards glance. Surely, _this_ would mark his work as an order of genius above the LighTech models. Once Sennet's own line of robot masters claimed dominance in the marketplace, he could relax some. The thought made his shoulders sag with relief.

Perhaps this weekend he would take Kalinka to see the ballet, just as he had done when the family had been whole. It would be good to simply enjoy the grace of the dancers and take his mind away from this constant work.

"Come," St. John's voice broke the musings. "Your robot will be fine until we return from lunch."

Cossack nodded and stepped out into the hall.

"Sweet dreams," Abijde joked at the inert security robot as the door closed.

_Tokyo, Japan_

In the corner of a brightly-lit laboratory, an aging man with bright blue eyes leaned back from a computer terminal and sighed, his work finished for the moment. He might have reminded the children at the museum of Santa Claus, had he been dressed in red fur rather than a brown suit and white lab coat. Age lines—recently deepened—crinkled the corners of his eyes as he massaged the bridge of his nose.

"How was it?"

A woman's voice broke the silence. Dr. Light turned in his old-fashioned swivel-chair to regard his android "daughter." To any eyes but Thomas Light's, Roll appeared to be a roughly seventeen-year-old girl with large, blue eyes like her father, and standing five feet two inches, like her famous brother. Hair the color of beaten gold and tied up in a green ribbon hung in a ponytail down her back.

Dr. Light almost smirked. Roll had developed a preference for wearing a green ribbon within weeks of her activation with a human-like attachment that astounded even her inventor-father. Few would ever guess that she was one of the most sophisticated androids ever created.

"It went well. But I'll be grateful when Rock is finally ready to be reactivated. Using the remote-drone to put PR-friendly words in his mouth has always been distasteful, but lately it is truly beginning to make me angry." His eyes flicked to a white egg-shaped pod that bulged like a blister from the far wall of the lab.

"Soon," Roll answered. Her tone was gentle. "The computer estimates another week at the most before he's completely recovered." She sat down next to the man she had be programmed to treat as a father. "Are you all packed?"

"Not yet." Light let his arms go limp, hanging by his side. "What a nightmare. The thought of sitting in court all week . . . is it too much to hope for a natural disaster?"

"Let me come with you," Roll urged, not for the first time.

"Out of the question," Dr. Light answered immediately. "Run this through your logic circuits again—the last thing the company needs at these proceedings is a living reminder that autonomous robots are the brainchild of myself and Dr. Wily. If you get indignant again and call the judge names—" Roll had the decency to wince at that, "they'll not only order a halt in production, but the courts may well order us to deactivate you and Rock!"

"All right," Roll answered. Her smile was anything but reassuring. "You go to Geneva. I'll just amuse myself. Perhaps I'll take a quick teleport over to Seattle or Houston."

Dr. Light frowned. "That may not be such a bad idea, actually. I realize that Sennet and their hot new duo of young roboticists are eager to make robotics into a competition, but if we can simply offer different robot types, I see no reason why both companies can't flourish. It's too late to alter this year's line, of course. Still . . ."

"The Robotics Trade Show will begin this week," Roll replied.

"Don't remind me," Light said sourly. "Just my luck that after half a year of deliberation, the courts _finally_ set a date during the trade show."

Roll made a sympathetic face. "I can scope out Sennet's offerings for this season. Heck, I can even take a look at what Yamusho is doing."

"Don't just focus on the robot masters," her father cautioned. "Pay special attention to the standard maintenance and industrial robots, as well. Our EG series continues to do well, and I think that the upgrades this year will help, but I'd like to see what other companies are doing."

"Of course." Roll smiled. "Snap, Julie and Bess will probably enjoy having the house to themselves for a while." Her smile vanished. "I think Snap is planning to move his family to an apartment next month. He keeps approaching me about it, but chickens out."

"It's hard to live under another man's roof," Dr. Light acknowledged. "They've been welcome guests and dear friends, but we knew this day would come soon."

Roll shook her head. "It's foolish and wasteful. Logically—"

"Logic has little to do with this decision," Light interrupted gently.

"Fine." Roll put her hands on her hips. "Let's talk about something else."

She paused, as if searching for the right words.

"What is it?"

Roll shrugged. "It may be nothing. I may still be paranoid."

Now Light _did _smirk. "A paranoid android. I must be either the best programmer in the world, of the craziest."

"Maybe both," Roll answered. "I was looking through our sensor logs again, and found that one of our long-range remotes picked up some teleport activity. It's definitely ours or Dr. Wily's; it left behind a different energy signature than the new military experimental tech."

Dr. Light felt a migraine building. "Hm. A sleeper cell robot, perhaps. Where? When?"

"Hong Kong. About a week ago." Roll paced towards the white pod and laid her hand on it. "I tried to find out more, but the only mention of teleporter use was a request for information from the Hong Kong police from the UE government about a possible escaped test subject. The file itself was encrypted."

"Well . . ." Dr. Light stood and stretched. Several vertebrae made unsettling _pop_ noises. "We'll deal with it tomorrow. What do you say we play some _Go_?"

Roll nodded, and the pair turned to leave.

Before reaching the lab exit, roboticist and android alike looked mutely at the repair pod where Rock—the genuine hero with whom the audience had thought it was speaking—lay curled in what could only be called a fetal position, dreaming.

Just as he had ever since the battle with Dr. Wily.


	4. Chapter 2: Prodrome

"_Preliminary studies of the Irregular Virus have shown it to be most resistant to exogenous alteration, though it remains itself highly adaptable. No two instances of the affliction have presented the same; like the organic malady of the same name, the virus simply slithers into a host, subtly alters key components of their core operations, and propagates until the host is consumed. This, my friends, is the nature of the beast we have chosen to slay!"_

-Recorded testimony of Dr. Doppler at the World Trial, 21XX

**Chapter Two**

**Prodrome**

Quint glanced back and forth at the ruined landscape.

An unpleasant feeling activated his emotional response subroutines and tripped off a cascade effect throughout the rest of his positronic neural pathways. Circuit by circuit, the android perceived a mixed response of sorrow and culpability with idiopathic origin.

Guilt.

_My fault? Did _I _do this?_

Troubled, he ran a self-diagnostic and performed a rapid parsing of his short-term memory buffers. Disturbingly little remained in his cache to help guide his assessment; his arrival in this place was preceded only by shadowy corrupt memory files that occasionally yielded some clear images. A more comprehensive scan of his long-term memory files was even less helpful; the files had been locked and placed behind savagely efficient firewalls.

_Okay—no use in trying to square one. _Quint took a long look at his surroundings; perhaps they could generate some clue as to his situation.

Here and there, treeborgs clawed at the sky, denuded of their photovoltaic leaves. The ground and trees alike sported scorch marks in apparently random patterns. A low hill, capped by a broken wall and what might have been the foundations of a small house, squatted in the middle of his field of vision. Around its base clustered the shattered husks of innumerable small robots, likewise blackened.

Quint reached up to scratch his head; it was a human gesture he had seen that denoted puzzlement. Despite the void in his memory banks, his compulsion to emulate human behavior kept too firm a grasp on his foundational programming to release him from the reflexive desire to perform such actions.

His hand met with unexpected resistance. His fingers had expected to feel synthetic hair too perfectly replicated to be distinguished from its organic counterpart. Instead, questing digits found themselves touching a metal V-shaped crest attached to the forehead aspect of a smooth metal helmet.

_My helmet shouldn't have a crest like that_. Whence the thought had originated Quint could not determine—perhaps from behind one of the firewalls. He attempted to verify the origin signature for aberrancy, but found nothing alarming in its content other than its unexpected appearance.

Something else that had been confusing him suddenly became clear; the wavelength of light he perceived had been altered by the addition of a filter over his optic sensors. Dropping his hand from the unexpected crest over his forehead, he felt a visor extending from the brow of his helmet to the bridge of his nose.

_Curious_.

Nearly microscopic servomotors adjusted the convexity of his optical lens, and he performed a quick long-range visual sweep of the area. No footprints or marks of vehicles scarred the ground—not even his own. _That means I must have teleported here—or been teleported by a stationary unit_.

Seeing no logical alternative, Quint chose a direction and began to walk.

_Tokyo, Japan_

The doorbell's chime was incongruous in the morning quiet.

Though the Light household occupied an area technically within the Tokyo megalopolis, the inexpressibly precious acre of green had been surrounded by sonic dampeners so that the noise of the untold millions going about their business would not intrude upon the genius of its residents.

Roll looked up from the circuit board in her hand. "That's odd. Dr. Light's shuttle to the turboport isn't due here for another half an hour."

Across the breakfast table, Snap and his two daughters—Bess and Julie—shifted curiously in their seats. Roll noted that Bess in particular seemed particularly squirmy this morning. The young Australian girl always looked somewhat ill-at-ease in her school uniform, but today Roll found herself considering the use of a colloquialism she had recently discovered in her reading: "ants in the pants."

A moment passed in silence. Snap cleared his throat. "Shouldn't one of us answer it?"

Roll shook her head, noting with detached interest how the slanting sunlight reflected from the golden microfibers that made up her tresses. "No need. Eddie will answer. If our visitor is truly a guest and not just another media jackal, we'll know soon."

"Fair enough," Snap replied, and returned his attention to breakfast.

Roll eyed the three humans curiously, attempting to assess their enthusiasm for the fare laid before them by subtle visual cues. Organic behavior continued to fascinate her; human behavior in particular held her interest the most.

In her attempts to better comprehend and emulate humans, she had taken on a number of duties around the house and the LighTech production factories here in Japan. Teleporting to work each day to supervise the research, development and production of LighTech's robots, she found some sense of accomplishment in the way she had begun to truly blend with the human workers.

A brainstorm of hers on returning from work one day had been to prepare food for her human family. It had been her observation that human beings engaged in a large amount of their emotional bonding during mealtimes. The more she had puzzled over this phenomenon, the more she had noticed that human beings would often conduct all manner of social or business networking while eating as well.

Why exactly this should be she had not yet fully worked out. One of her stronger theories was that on an instinctive level, human beings who consumed food in close proximity to one another somehow identified each other as members of the same pack, and thus grew more and more predisposed to look upon each other as partners rather than rivals in the search for shelter, food and mates. That such an atavism should still hold true after hundreds of millennia astounded her, and she had shared her revelation with Dr. Light.

Rather than the amusement she had expected him to evince, the aging roboticist had nodded and suggested that she study this matter further, if she felt that it drew her closer to a more comprehensive understanding of humanity.

Today marked the third month since she had begun her socioculinary experiment, and she had opted for something simple: omelets served with diced bacon and avocado, lightly seasoned with paprika. While Dr. Light had not yet risen to eat, Roll always made sure that breakfast was ready before Bess and Julie left for school.

The silence was pregnant. The sound of Eddie's trundling robotic feet receded down the hallway towards the front door. Roll smiled at the Angelwood family.

"How are the eggs?" she asked lightly.

A stab of disappointment ran through her as Snap's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly. He blinked twice, rapidly. Already, prior experience warned her that the next words to come out of his mouth would be either a half-truth designed to obfuscate his actual feelings, or an outright falsehood. Given his recent discomfort in discussing his plans to move away, she calculated a high probability for the latter possibility.

All three answered at once.

"Great!" Bess's answer never varied; Roll admired the child's loyalty despite the obvious lie.

"Fine," Julie replied neutrally.

"Good job," Snap answered. His tone was oddly hollow, and Roll could tell that he noticed as well. He winced slightly and set down his fork. "I'm sorry, Roll—"

Roll smiled. "It's all right, you guys. I realize that cooking is as much an intuitive art as it is a logical process. I'll never learn if you keep trying to spare my feelings." She added a shrug for effect. "Besides, as an android, my feelings are not as complex as yours; I have no ego to wound."

Now it was the Australian expatriate's turn to smile. "I'm rememberin' an incident a few months ago involvin' shrimp tempura that makes me think otherwise."

Chagrin caused Roll's synthskin to redden just a shade—another spontaneously generated anthropomimetic reaction from her self-modifying emotive algorithms.

"Also," Julie observed, pointing at Roll with a fork still partially loaded with eggs, "You blush. That seems like a 'complex feeling.'"

"You're avoiding the issue," Roll answered firmly. She had seen this before; Julie in particular seemed fascinated by attempts to provoke a spontaneous emotional response from her android housemate. Sometimes the teenager would purposely goad Roll to try to distract her from a sensitive topic.

"Don't get angry with me," Julie replied with a nonchalant air that confirmed Roll's hypothesis. She absently noted that the gibe had indeed produced the desired effect; her annoyance subroutines had already activated in response to the sullen teen. She made her mouth a straight line.

"My emotional state aside, I would appreciate some feedback on my culinary experimentation." The android woman's tone brooked no argument.

Snap shared a look with his daughters and sighed, "It isn't the eggs, Roll. Although truth be told, they're a little . . . grainy."

Probability matrices expanded and collapsed in Roll's positronic brain. A maze of logic gates flared to life and darkened sequentially as likelihoods were organized and ruled out in turn, until a short list remained. Roll took a breath and chose the one at the top of the list as the greatest statistical probability.

"You're leaving soon, aren't you?"

Snap started guiltily. Bess and Julie simultaneously discovered that their school uniforms had acquired barely perceptible wrinkles that needed immediate smoothing.

"Let's talk about your gritty eggs," Snap suggested.

"A moment ago, they were just 'grainy,'" Roll protested.

The Australian shrugged. "A moment ago, I figured that talking about your eggs would be more awkward than anything else you could bring up." A surprising devil-may-care smile flashed across his features. "The situation has just changed."

"A move now would be an illogical waste of resou—"

Snap waved the female android to silence. "None of that, now. The decision's been made. Got nothin' to do with logic, an' you know it." He spread his hands.

"If you say 'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do' a _certain_ man will eat this tablecloth," Roll snarled, bunching the checkered cloth in both fists.

Snap froze in mid-position. "Wouldn't think of it."

"Am I interrupting?" A woman's clipped voice chirped from behind Roll.

"Absolutely," the android answered without turning around. She slowly rose, her hands pressed flat against the surface of the table. Half leaning forward, she said flatly, "This is not finished."

"Oh, yes it is," Snap replied. To the woman behind Roll he said, "It's not an interruption at all. Thank you as always for a lovely breakfast, Roll." He stood and brushed crumbs from his hands.

Reluctantly, almost as an afterthought, he said, "This is an order. Don't bring this up again."

_A robot must obey all commands._

Her Priority One module sent a searing ripple throughout all other operating systems. Gyroscopic sensors—momentarily interrupted by the invocation of the Third Law of Robotics—reasserted themselves. To outside eyes, Roll trembled with anger.

Something foul and Japanese that she hoped the children could not yet understand growled out of Roll's mouth. Judging by the way Julie's eyes widened, the android woman calculated a high probability that she had just committed what she had heard termed a _faux pas_. However, as the girls stood to follow their father out the door, neither called attention to it.

Julie muttered an indistinct "Later."

Bess waved timidly, her eyes drowning in sympathy.

The woman cleared her throat, and Roll felt a spike of data feedback she had come to identify as irritation. She activated a dampening routine to bring her emotional response under control and stood straight. Taking a deep breath, she turned around.

"I'm here to speak with Dr. Thomas Light," the woman said.

Everything about her bespoke professional brusqueness. Roll noted the pinched lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that indicated a habitual scowl, and a slight paleness at her knuckles where capillary pressure could not overcome the intensity with which she squeezed the sides of her datacard. Her blond hair was combed straight, jutting at a knife-sharp angle to her collar.

Though Roll was no expert on human fashion, she judged this woman to be intentionally projecting a severe image. Dressed entirely in shades of navy, the only hint of color about her was the flashing LED half-camouflaged beneath a button of her suit jacket—where most business people kept the tiny power indicator for their nanophones.

"He's busy packing for the trip to Geneva," Roll answered. She hoped she didn't sound testy. "Who may I say is calling?"

"You may say nothing," the woman answered placidly. "You will take me to Dr. Light."

Something began to heat up in lateral sector of her emotion module. Roll ignored the queue of alarm messages that appeared in her safety diagnostic display. A host of acerbic responses formulated themselves in her verbal matrix, ranging from crude scatological metaphor to sophisticated Wilde-like double entendre.

Concluding that any of these responses would only deepen discord, she discarded them—although not permanently. Some of the more creative offerings she filed away in her sarcasm submenu for future use.

"Please be seated in the living room," she answered. "If you tell me your name, I will inform Dr. Light of your presence. However, he is not in the habit of receiving guests in his private chambers." She was rather proud that she managed to avoid yelling.

The woman's face darkened. Even as she predicted the inevitable, Roll mused to herself that this was a woman who expected obedience: one who was unaccustomed to being questioned.

"Take me to Dr. Light. And do not speak to me again," the woman ordered, her tone arctic.

Torn between rage, shame and the invincible directive to obey, Roll turned and left the kitchen, heading towards her father's room. The woman's footsteps followed her confidently.

Fifteen microseconds into the first step of her involuntary journey, it occurred to Roll that this visitor might mean harm to Dr. Light. Though no such indications had been forthcoming, it would do no harm to be cautious. Since discourse had been preemptively countermanded, Roll activated a remote link to several hundred databases in hopes of discovering the identity of her tormentor.

It took almost five seconds of searching; the woman's profile had been painstakingly hidden between behind layers of dead-end shadow-identities and nearly hack-proof firewalls. Only a few types of people had both the capital and the need to protect their own identities so rigorously.

Maria Eve, 36 years old, was a senior executive from the LighTech Board of Directors, and according to internal company chatter, a favorite for the position of CEO in the future. Since Dr. Light was still the main shareholder in the company he had founded decades ago as well as the primary force behind most of the company's product, he was still the _de facto_ leader of the corporation.

_Why would a senior exec fly here all the way from Redmond?_

After leading the executive through an intentionally rambling and circuitous route to Dr. Light's room, all the while taking care to step firmly with each foot so that noise was maximized, Roll stopped at the door to her adoptive father's room and knocked lightly on the door. Behind it, she could hear John Coltrane.

_Jazz. He always listens to Jazz when he's worried._

"Roll?" the reply came within. Dr. Light's footsteps approached. "Open the door, it's all right. I'm changed and I've nearly finished pack—" The roboticist cut himself short as he opened the door and noticed Roll's accompaniment.

Dressed comfortably in khakis, loafers and a short-sleeved button shirt, the world-renowned scientist looked more like he was about to go on vacation than to the most important trial of his life. His suitcase, however, was crammed with design specs and datacards detailing his latest ideas for the next set of industrial robot masters.

"Ah. So that's why you stomped about and didn't just activate the door servos yourself. Music off." The saxophone in the background wended into silence at his command, and he crossed his arms. "You might have just come upstairs and told me we had company."

"She ordered me not to speak to her and to take her right to you," Roll answered.

"Did she." Light's reply was not a question. Eyebrows still the dark color of the scientist's youth drew together. "I'll speak with our unmannerly _guest_, Roll. Would you please go check to see what she's done to Eddie?"

Roll nodded. "Sure."

"Are you okay?"

With a venomous glance at the woman, she said sweetly, "I cannot tell."

_What a waste_, she thought as she stormed down the stairs. _I'll be she's never even seen the play_. She quickened her pace, unsettled.If this detestable woman had treated _her_ with such disregard, she worried that perhaps she had ordered Eddie to walk into traffic for his temerity in stopping her at the door.

The thought almost stopped her short. _Why on earth would I worry over such a thing? Even if she ordered him, Eddie couldn't do that to himself; the Second Law would preserve him_. Nevertheless, the strange aberrant thought circled about in her prefrontal circuitry.

Why would she develop such a faulty hypothesis? _How_ could so do so? Her logic and personality modules had been designed so that such aberrations should be impossible; though she might behave in ways that mimicked human emotion, her own internal processes were dictated first and foremost by calculation.

. . . weren't they?

Awhirl in a tempest of confusion and conflicting error messages, Roll finally found Eddie walking in a complicated pattern of loops and backswitches near the edge of the Light manor. Numbly, she told him, "It's all right, Eddie. Dr. Light says you can go back to the house and wait by the door again. Recharge if you need to."

She could have sworn that the little red fliptop gazed at her gratefully before trundling back towards the domed house.

_What the hell is wrong with me?_

Her footsteps took her around the grounds for several minutes while she ran repeated diagnostics on herself. The results were contradictory and frustrating; she would need to power down for a full systemic diagnostic sweep. It would mean she'd need to forgo some personal conversation with Dr. Light that she had planned for before he left, but it couldn't be helped. If her internal programming was breaking down, she needed to know immediately.

Her pace quickened; now that she had a course of action, she intended to waste no time. Through the front door, the living room, and down the stairs to Dr. Light's massive lab she marched. The huge neurodynamic IBM computer that covered the south wall blinked to life as she entered.

"Diagnostic mode," she ordered.

The supercomputer accessed the necessary programs and indicated standby. Roll opened her white stasis pod and kicked off her shoes. Before lying down on the white cushioning inside, she scribbled a hasty note so that Dr. Light would not trouble himself over her and miss his flight.

_Minor aberrancy. Going into stasis for diagnostic. I'll call you when I wake up. Good luck at the trial. Let me know if you need anything._

With that she lay down, pulled closed the hatch and glanced over at her still-sleeping android brother.

"Well," she said aloud. "I guess it runs in the family."

The lights dimmed as the lab concluded that nobody was home to work, and shadows swathed the sleeping android twins.

_Tokyo, Japan_

"This is as unexpected as it is presumptuous," Thomas Light began.

"Your equipment was malfunctioning," Maria Eve calmly replied. "So I circumvented it."

Light seethed inwardly. "A call would have been more appropriate, and would not have violated Roll's autonomy."

Maria Eve tilted her head slightly. "I still don't understand why a certified genius would bother personifying his machines." She shrugged. "Eccentricities aside, this is an off-the-record visit. The board determined that an untraceable conversation would be better." Ticking off the names on her fingers, continued. "Sennet, Yamusho, Shirow Cybernetics, U.S. Robotics and Genesis Systems have all been investing heavily in corporate espionage since last year's incident."

_Liar._

Quantum-entangled communications made eavesdropping impossible; since the messages literally appeared across any distance instantaneously, they had no path, and could not be intercepted. Whatever the woman was playing at, her mention of corporate spies was nothing but a smokescreen.

"Go on." Light put his hands in his pockets.

"I have here a list of taboo subjects according to the Board of Directors. You are recommended to steer clear of these topics during the trial if at all possible. We don't want your appearance to have any negative effects on second-quarter earnings."

Light frowned. "Why don't you simply assign somebody to follow me around and make sure I don't say the wrong thing?"

"We have." The executive smoothed a nonexistent hair behind her ear. "You'll meet him in Geneva. Mr. Post has already been apprised of our preferences."

Dr. Light picked up his suitcase and slung a carry-on bag across his shoulder. "I believe my lawyer's job is to represent me and to aid me answering the charges the UE has brought—not to pander to the desires of a corporation."

Brown eyes fixed on Dr. Light's blue. "The board has already discussed this. Be certain that we have not encouraged Mr. Post to pursue any course which would compromise the integrity of the proceedings."

Light waved towards the door. "We can continue this conversation downstairs." Thoughtfully, he added, "Why do you care? I'm sure the board has already conceived several contingencies to divorce the LighTech brand from my personal image if I'm convicted."

_That_ seemed to shake her; he had hit on something that the board had not wanted him to know. After a brief pause, she conceded. "That is true. But our analysts have determined that stocks would benefit more from a favorable ruling than any contingencies we have put into place."

Folding her arms across her chest and letting the datacard dangle from two fingers, the executive tried a different approach. "I'll be blunt," she started.

"You've been blunt enough already," Light replied. "Perhaps you should just try being honest." As the woman opened her mouth for a rejoinder, he interrupted. "Recall that I'm not one of your corporate subordinates, Ms. Eve; I'm the _founder_ of this company. Should I choose to drive it into the ground by selling all my stock to the board of Sennet Robotics, I'll do so in a heartbeat."

Her mouth worked silently as she blanched, then colored.

"You surprise me, Dr. Light," she said at last. "I had always heard that you were temperamental, but I never imagined that you would be slighted by my treatment of your . . . housekeepers."

He waved a hand to shut off the power in the kitchen. "If memory serves, imagination is not in surplus at board meetings."

"You need not antagonize me," she replied. Dr. Light found himself wishing that Roll were here to witness their guest's discomfort. "Believe it or not, the Board is on your side."

"Very well. Explain why you have _really_ come to visit me in person, Ms. Eve."

She took a few precise steps to the kitchen table, now dappled in the midmorning light. "Do you recognize the name Edward Mears?"

Dr. Light pondered for a moment.

_Mears. Timothy Merrin. Jacob Mearing. General Mears._

"Is he perchance a military man?" Light asked.

Maria nodded. "A general. In point of fact, he was the ranking officer in the task force that dropped the bomb on Dr. Wily's fortress and brought your soldier-robot back home."

Light felt his teeth clench at her casual dismissal of Rock, but let it pass. _That_ was an image he himself had worked hard to maintain for the sake of the world's morale. No need to take offense that that woman had bought into the hype he had so strenuously worked to project. "So he was; I recall now."

"He'll be present at your trial," Maria continued. "For the past six months, he's been very assiduously and very quietly attempting to obtain funding for the Advanced Robosoldier Program in the United States."

A throbbing sensation mounted behind the roboticist's blue eyes.

_No. Does he think we worked for _nothing_?_

A voice he barely recognized as his own growled, "Idiocy. Damn _lunacy!_" His pulse hammered with anger. "You know my feelings about this. Will and I—" he stopped himself. "There is nothing to be gained from the mindless manufacture of killing machines. The world nearly blew itself to hell last time it forgot that bit of advice."

The lady arched an eyebrow. "It might interest you know, then, that he has been pushing very hard—although again, quietly—for the publication of your work. Specifically, he has spearheaded an initiative to declare Rockman public property rather than the property of LighTech, Inc."

"There are a number of problems with that statement, Ms. Eve, which I do not currently have time to address. I will be contacting the Board of Directors very soon; we can continue this conversation then." Dr. Light took a deep breath to steady his nerves.

His unwanted guest silently preceded him to the door. Before crossing the threshold, she turned to face him one last time. "We both want the same thing, Dr. Light."

"I very much doubt that."

"We _do_. Both the Board and yourself are committed to keeping the technology that made Rockman possible strictly proprietary." She ventured a smile—an expression she clearly had little practice in forming. "The list of subjects to avoid has been linked to your nanophone. Please review it before your arrival in Geneva. Our contact will meet you there, along with Mr. Post."

Thomas Light stood for a moment longer on his doorstep, his morning ruined.

"Kruppa," he ordered of his nanophone implant.

_Palma, Spain_

Consuela Alvarez hated her job.

Sunday had once been her family day: the precious hours during the week when she could visit with her _lito_ and _lita_. None of the rest of her family had survived the _revolución_. As it was, her _lito_ could only move around with the aid of a wheelchair. His friends urged him to accept the UE's offer of bionic legs, but he spat in their faces.

Literally, sometimes.

Grandpa Vargas—her only remaining grandfather, now—was a man hardened by his years of war and of toil at the steel mill. Bow-backed and claw-handed, the pinprick gleam in the old steel-worker's eyes showed a soul embittered and paranoid, even before the Robot War that had crippled society six months ago.

"_Cabron!_ Why should I wish to replace my legs with such abominations?" Fermín Vargas' voice was a rasp of leather against spite. "Is it not enough that the machines took my stride from me, that now I should seek to make myself one of them?" When her grandfather grew so angry, he would launch into a tirade. Consuela's _lita_ often joked that her husband had been born a century too late; he should have been a revolutionary beside Francisco Franco.

Consuela loved him. Though _abuelo_ Alvarez—a sculptor and a gentle man—had treated her with love and tenderness, Consuela had always preferred the honest irascibility of her maternal grandfather, even as a little girl. It was his flinty stubbornness that had spared him and his wife from the fate the rest of her family had suffered. His refusal to buy domestic robots had, in the end, been his salvation.

The nightmares that day had spawned would haunt her until her death. She had been working in Palma when Dr. Wily's infamous ultimatum spread across the globe. Her first indication that the world had changed forever had been when her nanophone implant chirped in her left ear; her family knew not to call her during work hours. After all, he work with the patients was a delicate process.

The noises that had squalled from the microscopic earpiece had been too horrible to endure. Her mother and father called her name desperately. Besides that, the only words she could distinguish were "Don't come home . . . dangerous . . . love you!" A grinding, chattering cacophony that had been building in the background swallowed them up, then. Occasionally, she could hear horrifying screams rising above the noise of household robots intent on murder—like a drowning man briefly breaking the surface of his suffocating tomb to gasp vainly for air.

So she had hidden.

Inside one of the maximum-security isolation cubes she had huddled numb with panic, until the UE peacekeeping troops had arrived and told her that the riots were over. A man in a drab uniform had cautiously opened the door to her self-imposed prison, his face sagging with relief when she stood from behind her makeshift fortress of tables and chairs to get a better view of him.

"_Gracias a Dios_! I am so tired of opening doors to find only corpses!"

Her parents' house had been a grisly display when she finally summoned the courage to investigate. Not only had the rampaging automatons murdered her parents and the guests who had been visiting for dinner, they had even killed the pets. _That_ had shattered Consuela's carefully-cultivated façade of professionalism.

Since then, she had been unable to function as a normal human being. Her quality of work declined as she withdrew from her patients and her coworkers more with each sunset. The slightest little thing would set her to weeping now, or to inexplicable storms of rage or bouts of melancholy. She could not look at a kitten without feeling nauseated.

She cleaned the house herself, and sold it the following week to a group of shell-shocked university students who had fled from robots in the Netherlands, and didn't stop until they hit the ocean.

As if _here_ were any safer. Consuela had snorted with disdain.

Now she lived in an apartment built like a bank vault, only a mile away from her grandparents' old house. Every Sunday she visited them and they took walks, or went to the hollies, or simply sat at home and read to one another while dinner simmered in the kitchen.

At least, until two months ago, when her regular sponsor, Dr. Soliz, had abruptly taken a sabbatical. Reassigned to Dr. Javier Delgato, she now found that her schedule included Sunday visits for speech therapy. The beginning of her day included an hour-long appointment every week with the man she hated most in the world—the man whose madness and caprice had taken her parents from her and made a parody of her emotional stability.

Dr. Wily's neural regeneration therapy was administered every Wednesday. By Saturday afternoons, his mental state had begun to degrade once again. Although each treatment drew him closer to normalcy, Sundays were always taxing.

She hated his stutter, hated his wide-eyed frustration as he struggled to form words he had known only two days ago, hated his hang-dog expressions when she chided him, hated his juvenile pouting, hated his contrition.

_That_ galled her the most. How _dare_ he feel sorry for what he had done! This man had no right to take her anger from her—yet every time she worked with him, patiently endured his broken, stumbling syllables as he wrestled with his scrambled brain, _she_ felt sorry for _him_. She had only broached the topic of his mechanically-potentiated megalomania once. His eyes had glossed over with a sheen of unshed tears, and his jaw trembled.

"Ms. Alvarez," he had managed, "I can never apologize enough for what I have done. I am so sorry."

It had taken him almost a minute to get the words properly formed and out of his mouth—a long, uncomfortable minute, made all the more unbearable by his stubborn refusal to be conquered by his self-inflicted disability. Consuela had silently let him labor through his awkward apology, arms crossed tightly and lips pressed together. But he had persisted—it was clearly too important for him to let the matter drop halfway through.

Against all expectation, the man was _sorry_.

And Consuela hated him for it more and more every day.

The security guards at the entrance to Dr. Wily's concentric prison ran her retina scan silently and waved her through. Consuela bit her lip; now even the hired thugs wouldn't speak to her. Evidently, "Crazy Consuela" and her irrational, emotional outbursts had made a name for herself amongst the staff. Already thick-set and awkward, the nickname her coworkers now muttered behind her back chipped away at her self-confidence even more effectively than her nasal laugh and large hands.

The doors hissed open.

Dr. Wily sat in the middle of a cluster of hundreds of Rubik's cubes, glancing feverishly back and forth between them. As usual, the pattern and arrangement of the multicolored cubes was seemingly nonsensical—if any order existed, it was only in the mind of a man whose brain had been resequenced at the molecular level by his abuse of restricted teleport technology.

"Good morning, Dr. Wily," Consuela said, walking towards him briskly. "It's time for your speech therapy lesson."

The German prisoner spared her a brief glance before gesturing silently and helplessly at the groupings of toys. Consuela sighed and scrutinized them. Eight main nodes circled about Dr. Wily, interlinked by "threads" of the cubes. To Consuela, it seemed that the old man sat at the center of a colorful spider web.

"Do you think you can tell me what this means?" Consuela asked. She restrained herself from tapping her stylus against the datapad in her hand. "You've been awfully busy with this."

Wily frowned and pointed at a cluster off to his left. "This . . . floque? Nawt my sun. Sue . . . tzu . . . _too_ mennie jeersss."

The Basque speech therapist pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. "Dr. Wily, let's start with having a seat over at the table, okay?"

Dr. Wily nodded vigorously. "Hoe-key."

_Better_, she grudgingly admitted. _His neologisms are getting closer and closer to actual words._

Wily gestured to the one-person bench at the table silently. Consuela shook her head. "No, thank you. I prefer to stand. Have a seat, Dr. Wily."

"Can you tell me what this is?" she asked, tapping the screen of her datacard. It obligingly projected a hologram of a toothbrush, rotating slowly in the air.

Dr. Wily's brow wrinkled. "Strocktery. Stookbury. Storkbrunch. Torque wrench." His jaw worked and his eyes glinted. Consuela noted jugular vein distention as he forced himself to concentrate. "Torchbruth. _Toothbrush_." Triumph lit his face, turning his features fierce. "Toothbrush!"

"Good," Consuela answered tonelessly. She hoped her lack of expressed approval would discourage him. Sure enough, his victorious expression crumpled into something akin to a slapped toddler. "How about this?"

An image of a wagon replaced the toothbrush.

Dr. Wily didn't hesitate. "Dragon."

"Dragon," Consuela repeated flatly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Wily answered. "Dragon over Saint George. Naturally, the dragon slows his approach. He fears the spear, and his scales pale with wear and tear. You see? Never the Cyclops, only the dragon. Because concomitant use of polysaccharides only serve to ruin dental hygiene, and flying lizard is better than a handful of pebbles, don't you concur? Never so clear. Never so clear! A dragon, of course! Dragon—wagon. That is a wagon."

Consuela felt her eyes widen. "That's . . . that's quite a mouthful, Dr. Wily."

The criminal ducked his head in a childish display of embarrassment. "My apologies for the loutburst. I meant to stray: that is a wagon."

"Correct," she answered.

The display changed again, this time showing a pencil.

"Stencil," Dr. Wily ventured. "No, that's incorrect. _Was__ist__den los?_ It's an instrument for biting. Lighting. _Writing_. You hold it in your haaaaaand, and twist it about the pp_papier_. Makes its marks from bread. _Stein._ _Nein_. Lead." His eyes widened, and his gaze flicked towards the Rubik's cubes. "_Lead_. Of course. Simple!"

Consuela tapped and scribbled furiously on her datacard. _Mild__Broca's__and__Wernicke's__aphasia; circumlocution; marked improvement._

"Ms. Alvarez?"

Consuela glanced up. Dr. Wily looked forlorn.

"I must cube. Progif ny lewdness. Wivoud cube, muffin _macht_ _ziker._"

She glanced between Wily's beseeching gaze and the cubes. Inspiration coursed through her with an almost tangible jolt. _The cubes—whatever he's doing with them, it helps him concentrate!_

"Go ahead," she answered. She struggled to maintain a calm mask. Her heart raced. If she could somehow make progress in unraveling his obsession with the cubes—progress that Dr. Delgato and a team of Swiss mathematicians had thus far failed to make—she might regain some of the respect she had lost.

_No more "Crazy Consuela."_

Dr. Wily eagerly bolted back to his web of blocks and hastily began to rearrange them, twisting their faces with a manic intensity that Consuela had rarely noted in him. All the while, he muttered to himself. She strained to hear his words, afraid to move closer or even lean forward, lest the criminal suddenly grow wary of her surveillance.

_It's like a safari_, she suddenly thought, and had to restrain herself from giggling at the incongruous thought. She focused herself on Wily's speech. At first, it was the incomprehensible "word salad" she expected to hear from a patient who had sustained damage to Wernicke's area. However, as he continued to work, he gradually began to speak more lucidly, occasionally slipping into his native German.

"Spleen production without bubbles. Not the lead, the bubbles, so that the deep becomes homely. Cozy. _Zimmer_. Low-yield discourages predation. No kraken, no dragon! Simple. But even with the lead, a mere lunatic leopard leaps." He hurriedly placed several of the cubes in a complicated pattern, considered their arrangement, and changed the position of a few.

"_There_. A suitable framework, I suppose. Point zero zero. Perfect! Thermodynamics aside, the quandary is quantum." He slapped his palm to his forehead, and Consuela nearly rolled her eyes. Even with his brain jumbled, the mad scientist retained his cartoonish mannerisms. "Quantum? _Natürlich_! _Mark__drei__am__Blau_. Bitterness compounded endlessly leads to madness, and thus retribution! Oh, Tom!"

He swung his arms wide and turned towards Consuela. Upon noticing her, he jerked, as if he had been slapped.

A crafty light crept into his gaze, and he tilted his head slightly. Consuela felt a chill run down her spine, and she prepared to activate the emergency signal that would call the guards. However, Wily made no move towards her; rather he sat down in the circle again and smiled.

"Thank you, Ms. Alvarez. I feel much better." He spread his hands. "You know, the Chinese consider eight a lucky number."

"Is that so?"

The German doctor nodded. "I have it on the best authority."

"Dr. Wily, I would like to know what you were just speaking about," Consuela said. She felt shaken—as if she had just witnessed something very important. Part of her shivered and wailed and begged to hide behind the table where images of her bloodied family could not find her, but she squared her shoulders. "You sounded clearer than I have ever heard you."

"Much clearer," Wily agreed. "I'd be happy to tell you, my dear. But just now, I feel a bit fatigued. I believe that all that brain-work has run me dry."

_No. I _need_ this break._

"Time is of the essence, Dr. Wily," Consuela replied. "Dr. Delgato must have told you that the key to rehabilitation is in complete honesty."

"He says a lot of things," the old man snapped peevishly. "But how does he expect me to make progress when the therapy doesn't stick? He doesn't even understand about—"

He stopped abruptly and looked over his shoulder. An angry cast settled about his features, and Consuela cursed his mercurial temperament—not for the first time. An accusatory tone suddenly shadowing his syllables, he leaned forward and demanded, "Do you have any children of your own, Ms. Alvarez? No," he interrupted as she opened her mouth to reply, "of course not."

She could feel herself blanching in anger. Her fingers pressed rainbow-colored distortion into the screen of her datacard, leaving bruises like oil slicks on the nanocrystal display. In her short time working at the asylum, none of the other prisoners had yet stooped to ridicule of her physical appearance. Worse than his slight, though, was his offhanded delivery.

"If you had lost family, you might understand my pain," he continued. "My son—but never mind. They say the cure for empty nest syndrome—"

Consuela's patience snapped.

"I _have_ lost family," she snarled. The datacard made a _crick_ in protest as her fingers punched through its display and the paper-thin flexible electronics beneath. "Six months ago, _cabron_!" She took a steadying breath. "We are finished today, Dr. Wily."

He stood. "May I see Tom?"

The request blindsided her. "Wh-what?"

"I haven't had a visitor once. I've been good. I would like to speak with Tom."

_Dr. Thomas Light. That's right—they were supposedly friends before the revolt_. Consuela felt something nasty and triumphant begin to seep between the cracks of her fractured self-composure. Spite soothed her frayed nerves, and for the first time since her parents' murder, she began to feel some measure of solidity.

"I assume you mean Dr. Light," she answered, her tone gelid.

"Tom," Dr. Wily nodded. Already his expression had begun to revert to its childlike baseline. For all the world behaving like a boy asking if his friend could come over to play, he asked, "Clay I see him?"

She smiled, sure to reveal as many teeth as possible. "I'm afraid not, Dr. Wily. He's scheduled to be in Geneva this week. For his trial."

The effect could not have been more pleasing.

"What? Why?" His brow wrinkled as he thought furiously. "Not his halt!" He gesticulated lamely. An ugly sense of satisfaction settled into the middle of the speech therapist's chest as Wily's consternation grew. "No pun cold fee! _My_ trial! Why?"

"We are finished today," Consuela repeated, and turned her back on the now-raving criminal. His babbling anguish devolved even further as the doors hissed open and Consuela left him with his miserable distress.

A final wail threaded its way through the closing door. Strong for the first time in months, Consuela's steps were firm as she strode from the condemned man's high-tech isolation cell. A clear path had finally blazed brightly through her morass of dread and indecision.

The League would be happy to finally have access to the man that had ruined them.

_Tokyo, Japan_

Yoshi Inafune leaned back in his plush office chair and stretched his legs.

The chair adjusted itself accordingly to his shift in weight distribution, whisper-quiet. His massive office—decorated here and there with robotics memorabilia too precious even for his museum—glittered in the slanting evening light. He glanced at the shining cityscape below—or in some rare cases—level with his window, and sighed appreciatively.

While many of his administrative staff now subscribed to the Western tradition of taking at least Sunday off from work, Inafune had never been comfortable with the notion; life was too short to waste on idleness. Of course, some days—like today—were worthy of an hour of relaxation. As a concession to his good mood, the Japanese tycoon walked across his palatial office to a mahogany chest—_real_ mahogany—and withdrew from its depths a small, flat bottle of extremely expensive bourbon.

Pouring a small amount into a faceted crystal glass, he took a deep breath and rocked back on his heels.

"Enjoying yourself, Yoshi?"

The billionaire nearly dropped his glass as he spun towards the source of the voice. Standing in the doorway of his office—_how had he bypassed all the security measures?_—was an imposing figure in an old-fashioned greatcoat. His hair sprouted from the sides of his head in two grey shocks, meeting his shaggy beard and moustaches. Inafune nearly did a double-take, the image was so incongruous with the man's otherwise fastidious appearance. His sunglasses, slacks, shoes and watch were all of the highest quality; as a _connoisseur _of the finer things in life, Inafune was an excellent judge of such things.

_Yakuza?_ It was the first thought that leaped to Inafune's startled mind. Although he had steered clear of the organized crime that was so intertwined with his country's economics, he had always feared a visit from a member of a "chivalrous organization" miffed by his steadfast refusal to play ball. He fought to keep his gaze from straying towards the hidden compartment in his desk.

_Play it cool._ He cleared his throat. "It's been a good day," he replied. Struggling to look nonchalant, he began to saunter towards his desk. "I was just about to have some bourbon in celebration. Perhaps we might have a drink together, and discuss whatever issue is of such importance that you went to all the trouble of disabling my security systems?"

"Oh, they're not disabled," the man replied, with a grin made all the more brilliant by its contrast with the round, dark spectacles perched on his nose. "They just can't see me."

"A neat trick," Inafune said, not entirely disapprovingly. "Do you work for the government?"

That seemed to sour the stranger's attitude. "Oh, no. I find that governments continually disappoint one so."

Inafune sat at his desk, and a feeling of relief flooded through him. _Safe_.

The man smiled again. "Are you going to ask my name? Or have you decided to shoot me with that magnificent firearm hidden in your desk?"

"Neither," Inafune replied, mastering his surprise. He leaned forward and took a deep breath. The atmosphere in the room had changed. The situation was no longer a threat to his personal safety; now he was involved in a business discussion, unless his instincts had misguided him.

And they so rarely did.

"Then you have either already guessed my identity, or you are waiting for me to drink some of your fabulous imported bourbon." The man swept his sunglasses from his face by a fine silver chain that dangled from the right lens. "I'm more of a wine man, myself, but I see no reason to spurn such gracious hospitality." Yoshi narrowed his eyes as he studied the man. Something . . .

Strong Grecian features and healthy bronzed skin weathered by age made for a distinct profile, even hidden beneath the beard and moustache that the businessman now guessed were grown deliberately for their dynamic, striking appearance. Though he had been engrossed with the early development of his business empire when he had last seen the man on holovid, the resemblance was unmistakable.

"Xanthos." Inafune made sure to pronounce the name with care, conscious of the Japanese tendency to slur dental fricatives. "Now I'm _truly_ embarrassed that I almost shot you."

The enigmantic multibillionaire philanthropist had nearly single-handed funded the Second Rainbow initiative responsible for pulling the planet back from the brink of the biological and nuclear oblivion that humanity had decreed for it in the third World War. Since his famous tribunal, Olivier Xanthos had retreated into roaming hermitage; his only notable contact with civilization was through the X Foundation, which he had quietly established to carry on the spirit of the now-defunct Second Rainbow.

"Don't be embarrassed," he answered, pouring himself a modest helping of bourbon. "The price of a dramatic entrance is the occasional misunderstanding. With guns. Speaking of which, would you mind?"

Inafune stood and bowed slightly. "Not at all." Waving his hand over a concealed sensor in his desk, he activated the released mechanism that opened the hidden compartment. Cushioned in velvet-covered memory foam, the drawer popped open, revealing the weapon within. Plated in chrome, hooped in flat crystalline rings down the barrel, and accented with indicator lights in all colors and bands of bright gold, it looked like something from an ancient Flash Gordon serial.

Xanthos whistled. "Is that a Marlin custom original?"

Inafune nodded proudly. "Only three like it in the world."

Sixteen years ago, when the world trembled beneath the threat of the world-killing Epoch comet, the best and brightest had come together to develop technology that would destroy the celestial menace. An early, unsanctioned effort by disenfranchised scientists had been an "atom laser" that concentrated matter in synchronous quantum phase and projected it in a focused stream towards its target.

Though the technology had never seen widespread use, a few weapons developers had experimented with prototype "ray guns." An eccentric gunsmith named Marlin had been famous for his artistic, dynamic designs, and had produced a handful of ray guns for enthusiastic collectors. Inafune had spent his second million on this one.

"It's a bit of an anachronism, you might say," he smirked. Pleased with his understatement, he lifted the weapon reverently from its cradle and proffered it with both hands.

An inscrutable look passed across his unexpected visitor's face. "I mean no disrespect," the Greek said carefully. "I have held enough weapons in my lifetime, and made a promise to somebody important that I would never hold a gun again. But it is truly impressive. You have a rare treasure there."

"I understand," Inafune replied, unruffled. He carefully placed the weapon back into its drawer and pushed it closed. "So, Mr. X, what can this humble one do for you?"

Mr. X removed his coat and tossed it unceremoniously across the arm of a nearby chair. Sitting carelessly, he gazed at his host with an unnerving, piercing quality. "Actually, I'm here to discuss what you've already done," he answered.

Inafune took a languid sip of his bourbon. This was a game at which he excelled. "Do go on."

Xanthos sighed, then chuckled. "You will think me an unmannered barbarian, no doubt, but I will be direct; the labyrinthine approach to diplomacy and business favored by your countrymen is beyond my grasp."

That elicited a smile. _Trying to put me off-guard_. "What irony that a Greek should be unfamiliar with Byzantine business practices."

Xanthos slapped the arm of his chair with a bark of laughter. "Ha! Very good! But I will not be dissuaded by your charming wit. Mr. Inafune, you have made several donations to the X Foundation over the past several months, with the express direction that a certain percentage be set aside for Dr. Wily's rehabilitative therapy at Palma." The Greek philanthropist rested his bushy chin on his fist.

_Ah._

"I'm actually surprised that the Foundation didn't ask me about this earlier," Inafune replied. "Especially considering my request for anonymity."

Xanthos shrugged. "Everybody who donates to the Foundation is 'Mr. X' to the beneficiaries. Anonymous benefactors are not so noteworthy; it's part of what we're known for."

"True," the tycoon answered. "But it's an open secret that every time 'Mr. X' contributes to a cause, it's just as likely to be the work of a third-party as it is yourself."

"More likely, actually."

"And I would wager that large corporations or public figures such as myself take pains to leave an easily-followed data trail so that the media can 'discover' the selfless 'anonymous' contributions they've made to a cause." Inafune leaned forward. "But as your research no doubt shows, I actually went to some trouble to secure actual anonymity for myself in this transaction."

The namesake of the X Foundation nodded. "Indeed."

"You're worried that my interest in robotics and history may be somehow connected with a nefarious plot to help Dr. Wily escape from prison," Inafune said, "or that there is some other hidden agenda at work here."

Mr. X shook his head. "Nefarious plots are bad business, Mr. Inafune, and I believe you to be a consummate businessman. No, I'm not even worried about a hidden agenda; if there wasn't one of those, you wouldn't be _much_ of a businessman."

"Then what?"

"Mr. Inafune, I've been watching you for some time," Xanthos answered. He took another sip of his bourbon, nearly finishing it. "You are shrewd in your dealings, but you avoid the stain of criminal contacts too often necessary to succeed in your world. Your demeanor suggests the enthusiasm of a child tempered with the wisdom of a septuagenarian. You haggled like a Yankee trader over the land your Robot Museum now occupies, but you spent a million dollars without a second thought today on Professor Harry May's Alpha robot."

Inafune grinned rakishly. "Hey, that robot was quite a sensation in 1934."

"You are an enigma, Mr. Inafune," Xanthos continued. "So I want to know, what is your interest in Dr. Wily?"

"I'm afraid I don't have a suitably enigmatic answer for you, Mr. Xanthos," Inafune replied. "The truth is that I feel somewhat guilty about going to business school and becoming embarrassingly rich at a time when other, more responsible men were creating public domain robots to change the world. I have a lot of money, no children, no surviving family, and an interest in robots that goes back to my childhood."

"Dr. Wily was a hero, Mr. X. A fallen hero now, but a hero nonetheless. The public may have forgotten that he literally saved the world, but I haven't." His expression darkened. "I have friends who were injured during the Robot War. I myself escaped injury, although the damage done to my businesses was extensive. The Dr. Wily that loosed his mechanical army to conquer the world is not the man that I grew up idolizing."

Yoshi Inafune looked his guest square in the eyes. "I want that man back. The world _needs_ that man back. Dr. Light and Rockman are a shining beacon of the best our world has to offer, but the shadow that Dr. Wily's fall has created will forever darken their greatness unless he comes back to us."

"I hope that you understand this."

His guest sat silently for a long moment. Then, in a single graceful movement, he rose from his chair and swept up his greatcoat. "I have enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Inafune," he said. "This has been an illuminating conversation."

"A moment, please, before you leave."

Mr. X paused, his arms threaded partway through the sleeves of his long, dark coat. "Yes?"

Inafune stood. "Why not just make a call? This conversation could have been conducted just as easily over televid."

Olivier Xanthos raised a single eyebrow. "Why, that's simple. I felt that a conversation in person would be much more revealing."

He opened the door to the hallway. "I wanted to see if you were like me, Mr. Inafune."

_Unknown_

Quint sifted through the rubble of the house.

Strewn about the low hill, the wreckage of a thousand robots shone dully in the grey light. An acrid odor that his olfactory sensor package identified as the smoky residue leftover from the incineration of organic material pervaded the air. Near the base of the hill, a set of old-fashioned railroad tracks stretched into the distance.

And all around the spoiled preserve, a ruined city bled smoke and clawed the sky with twisted, splintered iron beams that had once supported spacescrapers and massive antennae. Here and there, the watery light caught the shattered surface of broken glass dome that might have capped a tower or housed a metropolitan garden.

None of that mattered to Quint—at least not in comparison to his recent findings.

Side by side in front of him where he knelt, a group of blackened skulls in varying sizes grinned hollowly at him. They had been outside the house, grouped together—at a considerable distance from the bony structures Quint had identified as the remains of their bodies. Staring hard at the morbid display before him, feelings bumped up against the edge of his consciousness. Like moths against frosted glass, they made shapes maddeningly vague but evocative of something he knew to be utterly crucial.

One thing only was clear to him, and grew clearer with every femtosecond.

This was _his_ fault. Somehow, _he_ had caused this.

Gauntleted hands clenched into fists, and his teeth ground. Somewhere out there, the killers were at large. By some leap of intuition he could not fully explain, the green-armored robot knew that the destruction of this house and the city that surrounded it were inextricably linked; one had led to the other.

_Failure. I'm a failure_. Bitterness and self-recrimination welled up within him.

The murderers were out there somewhere. All he had to do was find them, and . . .

_And then what? _The thought nagged at him.

_It doesn't matter. I'll know when I find them; then I can make things right._

Quint tramped to the bottom of the hill and stood upon the train tracks. With a long backward glance at the house, he sighed.

_The past is inflexible. Only the future can be altered._

Quint focused his gaze down the tracks into the treeborg-shadowed woods and made his decision. He pace sure, he strode towards the mechanized forest.

He would make things right. He had to.

_Geneva, Switzerland_

Thomas Xavier Light smoothed his hair and straightened his suit jacket for the third time.

The Palais de Nations hulked before him, its pillared stone exterior massive and irrefragable. The grey-white stone gleamed from the ministrations of countless maintenance 'bots. The massive lawn—real grass, not synthturf—pooled about it in verdant tones. Here and there, the indignant squawk of a peafowl rose above the muted hum of the sonic dampeners surrounding the grounds. Half a mile behind him Lake Geneva glittered, a crystalline twin to the cerulean shades above it. Hovercars made noiseless by the invisible sound-refuting curtain glided gracefully through the roboticist's periphery.

_A miracle_. Dr. Light was no stranger to Geneva, but every time he visited, he felt a swell of pride. This had been a wasteland mere decades ago. The proud edifice that the League of Nations had ordered built in the 1920's had—like so many important historical sites—been a casualty of the third World War. In those first insane months, nuclear fire raked the world and soulless warbots marched through the rubble, dealing death and pain. The artificial topography humanity had imposed upon the world rapidly crumbled.

As all things must, the war eventually ended. No definitive victory by one side over another heralded peace. Instead, like an exhausted trauma victim, the war eventually bled itself to death; the drain of resources necessary to continue the mindless violence exsanguinated nations. When the survivors finally stopped to gasp for breath, they realized they were suffocating. Mass deforestation had threatened to wipe out the planet's oxygen supply. Air, water and soil—once thought to be limitless—had all been squandered or befouled by the shortsighted rage that gripped humanity.

Once the Second Rainbow had finally given mankind the impetus it needed to restore itself, one of Dr. Light's first projects had been to help in the restoration of many of the world's architectural icons. His pride curdled somewhat. He and _Will_ had helped to reverse the damage, or to reconstruct buildings entirely. Geneva had been a particular challenge; its beautiful lake scorched to a poisoned crater and the streets melted to glassy slag by savage nuclear spite.

It had taken less than a month for the robots that Light and Wily had created under the council's supervision to restore the city, brick by brick, and to neutralize the toxic hell that choked the soil and moiled the waters. Light could still clearly picture Wily's enraptured face framed by wild black hair as he gazed on their unfolding triumph.

"_Mein Gott_, Thomas! We'll build cities in a day! We can actually _save_ it!"

Something hard boiled under Dr. Light's sternum.

"Excuse me, doctor." Diction smooth and polished as a mirror—and equally as revealing of the man behind the voice—signaled the arrival of Terrance Post. Neither slim nor stout, a man in his early forties with short, mud-colored hair and a constant expression that could only be described as neutral, Terrance Post was a perfect stereotype of his profession. In a word: nondescript.

Dr. Light turned to greet his legal defender. "Mr. Post."

"Terrance, please," the lawyer protested without a hint of persistence. "How was your flight?"

"Tense," Dr. Light answered. "To tell the truth, I'd rather be en route to Houston. The Robotics Trade Show begins tomorrow."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Post replied. "Before we go in, I think we should review our strategy. Also, we're scheduled to meet a representative of the LighTech Board of Directors in a few minutes."

Dr. Light sighed, feeling far older than his years. "You know, I'm too young to have hair this white," he muttered.

"Did you review the list of subjects the Board wishes you to avoid?" his lawyer asked.

Light nodded with a bitter smirk. "It seems the only thing they want me to answer are my name, age and profession. Just about everything else has been blacklisted."

The lawyer motioned precisely towards a gleaming white bench near the edge of the lawn. "My plan is to focus on your stellar record of global service, to minimize the role you played in the creation of the Robot Masters, and to emphasize the role played by your soldier robot in ending the military control of Dr. Wily."

Light frowned and turned his gaze back towards the lake. "And how exactly do you plan to 'minimize' the role I played in making the Robot Masters? Between Will and myself it was almost a perfect half-and-half split. In fact, with the contributions by Rock and Roll, who were primarily my creations, the percentage shifts more in my favor."

Now it was the lawyer's turn to frown. "I'd advise against saying so in court."

"Look," the doctor said, "I think the facts speak for themselves without any need to spin them one way or another. Judge Heinrickson has a well-deserved reputation for clear-headedness and objectivity. For God's sake, he presided over _Olivier's_ trial. Any attempt to cloud the facts with subjectivity will only make things worse for us."

A small fliptop 'droid wandered towards them and offered refreshments and brochures. Light noted with a grin that it had been painted bright yellow, with a smiley face printed on its round lid. The stylized "L" embossed on its back was barely visible.

"There," he said, pointing. "_That's_ my legacy, Mr. Post. Robots that assist people and make life easier so that they can go about the business of living and repairing a planet they almost destroyed." Even though he wasn't thirsty, he took a bottle of Coke from the fliptop's storage compartment and let it scan his thumbprint for payment.

Mr. Post nodded distractedly, and touched his left ear. After a moment, he announced, "Our contact is here." Standing, he indicated a heavyset man in his thirties, dressed in an expensive tweed suit and fanning himself with a hat. A flock of tiny servbots followed him, their helicopter-like blades spinning frantically.

The man patted down his blond hair and reached a pudgy hand towards Dr. Light. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Dr. Light. I'm the liaison from the Board of Directors. Name's Cheever. Peter Cheever."

"Mr. Cheever," Dr. Light shook his hand with mixed emotions. "You're a bit different than I expected."

"That's what most people say," the big man replied cheerfully. "I know the Board sent you a list of things not to talk about, but I'm not here to be a babysitter. I'm just here to clarify why that's all necessary, and to act as an additional advocate at your trial."

"Advocate?" Dr. Light and Terrance Post's voices were nearly in unison.

"You've never even met me before," Light protested. "How can you advocate for me?"

"Get out of here, you damn buzzards!" Cheever waved in annoyance at the swarm of servbots and jammed his hat on his head. "Go find me a drink or something!" He turned his attention back to the pair he had come to meet. "Well, to be honest, I'm more interested in keeping your name clear for the investors who have LighTech stock, and making sure that the proprietary technology for your little warrior-buddy stays that way."

"Rock is a lab assistant," the roboticist said lightly. "I anticipate that he'll ask me to remove his combat upgrades soon, and then he can return to the duties and the lifestyle for which he was initially designed."

"Whatever you choose to do with your property isn't my concern," Cheever answered. "I just want to make sure that you don't say anything that will damage the LighTech brand, or land you in an international prison like your former partner." He leaned forward. "Have you been briefed on the situation with Mears?"

Light fought to keep from wrinkling his nose; the man was positively malodorous with sweat. "Yes. For some reason, Maria Eve felt it necessary to make a personal visit to my house and tell me."

"Good," Cheever smiled. "You know he'll be gunning for the publication of the Rockman schematics and O/S. Now I know that you have some . . . eccentric ideas about the personification and autonomy of your own domestic hardware, so let me make this clear."

He held up a finger for emphasis. "If you play that card in court, Mears is going to jump on it and cite the public domain clause. Because Rockman acted in the general public interest and upon public property, he can be construed as having no reasonable expectation of privacy. And since he discharged weapons on international soil, General Mears will cite UE agreements pertaining to full disclosure of methods used once the state of emergency has passed."

Light ground his teeth.

"Normally," Cheever continued, "that would simply mean turning over general technical specifications so that the beneficiary nations could assess any potential environmental damage. However, in Rockman's case, his weapons systems cannot legally be considered discrete from his overall structure. The general will push hard for full-body schematics."

Terrance Post nodded during the large man's explanation, affirming the conclusions. In the distance, Light could faintly hear a chorus of indignant binary chirping, punctuated by lower-pitched interrogative noises.

"So," the liaison finished cheerfully. "Personal feelings aside, don't go spouting any of your noble talk of self-awareness or synthetic rights, okay? If you actually believe in any of that, you'll need to pretend that Rockman is simply a piece of machinery doing what it was told to do. Otherwise, the UE military branch has a good, strong case for confiscating him and making a whole line of mechanical soldiers out of him."

The flight of servbots returned, balancing a large bottle of Coke between six of them, and Cheever happily snatched it from them, creating an eddy of miniature whirling blades and wide, surprised photoreceptors.

Thomas Light ran a hand through his hair with a weary sigh. "Perfect."

_Tokyo, Japan_

A status indicator _pinged_ in the darkness.

Roll opened her eyes and slowly pushed the hatch of her stasis pod open. On the southern wall, the huge IBM computer scrolled through dozens of holographic displays, tracing the neural pathways of her positronic brain.

Her mood much cooler, the female android stood and put her shoes back on. In the corner, the remote-controlled duplicate drone of Rock slumped in its own stasis clamps. Not needing the sophisticated refresh and recharge cycle of true androids, it didn't rate a full pod.

Irrationally angry at the sight of it, she snatched a dust-repellant drape from a nearby work table—cluttered with datacards, pens and paper—and tossed it over the offending proxy. She turned away, repressing the urge to stick her tongue out at it.

She walked to the computer and sat down. Scrolling through the various displays and diagnostic reports, she grew increasingly frustrated. All reports agreed that there were no dangerous variances. Her conduction pathways had increased, changed and rerouted themselves several million times since her activation a year ago, but that was an expected effect of her heuristic programming.

"This doesn't make sense," she muttered to herself.

_Of course, neither does saying that aloud_.

Why was her emotional response program producing aberrant thoughts unfiltered by her main logic module? She had seen emotional, almost erratic behavior in Rock during the Robot War, but he had been under stress not foreseen by his original programming. _And_ he had been under the influence of that horrible virus.

By contrast, the massive neurodynamic computer confirmed that she was in optimal condition, despite her unease.

_I don't _feel_ broken. Is it all in my mind?_ She almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of that thought. _If it _is _in my mind, then there's an error, and we're back to squaring one—why wouldn't that appear in diagnostic scans?_

Dr. Light might be able to help her, but he was in Geneva by now, where she had been forbidden to go. Besides, the last thing she wanted was to distract him with this when he had the trial to occupy him.

_Forbidden_. Irritation washed over her. Lately, it seemed that she had been defined more by her limits than her potential; she couldn't stop Snap and his family from leaving, she couldn't throw out an obnoxious uninvited visitor, and she couldn't understand these strange thoughts. She couldn't even make _omelets_ properly!

_Rock would understand_. She trudged miserably over to his stasis pod and looked at her twin brother's face through the plasteel window.

"Oh, Rock," she whispered. "Wake up."

Hawk-blue eyes snapped open for the first time in six months, and focused on her.


	5. Chapter 3: Renaissance

"_Spiritual beliefs? Are you kidding me? I'm born again! Again and again, in fact! And I'll tell you what: with every resurrection, my vision becomes clearer—even more distilled. Only problem with being reborn is making sure you're still _you_ when you come back, and not who your savior wants you to be."_

-Excerpt from psychological profile interview of Irregular Vava, 21XX

**Chapter 3**

**Renaissance**

The man's screams filled the small shed and spilled out the broken windows.

Christer Andersson tugged a long white glove onto his right arm—his _good _arm—and glared at his captive. He ran his left hand through his wild blond hair. Brilliant green eyes glowered from beneath trim, elegant eyebrows at the bound man. A waxy pallor gave his features an artificial cast. His dark trench-coat, boots, and trousers—all military issue—contrasted strikingly with his pale skin.

He signaled a momentary cessation of the torture. The screaming grew gradually hoarser, and eventually stopped altogether as the prisoner sobbed for breath. Andersson sniffed with disdain and inspected his victim.

Today's catch was special—not just another low-level enforcer. The man had been observed vandalizing a public sanitation 'bot earlier in the day, and had been taken into custody when he accosted a worker from a local robot factory. His arrest had been quick and brutal.

A chittering, grinding sound echoed in the claustrophobic space as Andersson's servant prepared to instruct the prisoner further. Bloodstained chunk-toothed gears extended upwards towards the captive, who writhed backwards to the furthest extent that his bonds would allow.

"Stop," Andersson commanded. The robot halted its advance, its grisly gear-drive inches from the terrified man's fingers. Hoarse whimpering seemed to leak from the man, as numb and spasmodic as his movements.

The Swedish expatriate clasped his hands behind his back and took a step forward, his smile as mechanical as his blood-spattered torture 'bot. "This is usually the juncture at which the accused demands to know why we subject him to such treatment." His German was nearly flawless, even without the translator he had placed in his captive's ear.

The words that came out of the man's mouth needed no translation, electronic or otherwise.

_Ah, is there a better language for profanity than German?_

"Now, now," he admonished, gesturing towards the robot. "Once Edward loses his patience, my captives usually lose consciousness. And be certain, the message I wish you to carry to your subordinates is important, so you must stay awake long enough to hear it."

His prisoner hawked and spat, a bloody gobbet landing on the floor just millimeters shy of Christer's black buckled tactical boots. "Whatever you want to know, you're wasting your time, pig!" A broken, hideous smile worked its way across the bloody ruin of the man's face. "We work in cells, to keep cops like you from—"

Christer strode forward and seized the man's jaw in his good hand. Though he could feel nothing, he knew exactly how much pressure to exert in order to create hundreds of tiny, immeasurably painful microfractures in the man's mandible. "I am not a police officer," he said. The prisoner's eyes widened in confusion and fear.

_Yes. _That's _what I wanted to see_.

"Your name is Rudolf Heim," he continued. "You work at a small grocer's shop in a poor district of Old Stuttgart. You have a wife, but no children, and your family visits you every Christmas, and on the anniversary of your brother's death."

"So you know who I am," the prisoner—Rudolf—made a point of his level voice despite the pain in his jaw. "That proves only that you have a Network connection."

"But that's not who you _really_ are, is it Rudolf?" Christer permitted himself a low chuckle. "Let's discuss your true self, and what you _really_ do. You joined the Human Supremacy League six years ago when your father lost his job at the power plant. At first, you just distributed leaflets and fliers outside of the plant. You sent mass messages over the Network to people you considered to be key members of the community. You even got brave and cut the power cord to a metool recharge bay once."

"You know nothing," Rudolf snarled.

"I know that your brother was killed in a fire that started when a smelting robot malfunctioned," Christer shot back. His heart rate began to climb. "I know that you arranged the kidnapping and beating of Karl Einthoven—the overseer of the local LighTech factory. I know that you bombed that same factory the next year, killing eight workers and injuring dozens more. I know that seventy-eight completed robots and more than one hundred unfinished were destroyed in that explosion."

A low growling emanated from the small robot at Christer's side. Although it could not feel emotion, Christer had seen to it that certain verbal or postural cues on his part would activate aggressive behavior by the robot. A meter high and painted bright red, it stood on a pair of bandy legs—an old LighTech EDY "Fliptop" model. Andersson himself had installed the weapons modules. Its right arm glistened with a dozen blades of varying length and sharpness. Its left ended in wide, coarse gears that turned inward.

"Mr. Heim, I know that in the past six months since James Walken and his misguided army of fanatics threw their lives away at Skull Castle, you have been the major organizing force for the League here in Baden-Württemberg." Christer released the man's cracked jaw and let him loll. "And I know that you are just the man to deliver my message."

"_Teufel_. You are a shit." Hatred only a true believer could muster burned from the human-supremacist. "You had better kill me now, or I will find you and make you pay." A hollow laugh wracked his battered frame.

That was all Christer needed. Precise and dispassionate, he punched seven times. With each strike, his right hand—steel and duraplas and wire—cracked another rib or broke another long bone. Safe beneath its white glove, the bionic arm remained spotless. Christer wiped his brow with his left hand and signaled Edward.

"Here is my message, Mr. Heim. Be sure to remember it." He leaned in close, until he could feel his beaten captive's ragged breath on his own face. "The Sons of Light have come. We will not stop until you and yours have been obliterated. The Human Supremacy League dies now, and we shall be its executioners."

His speech finished, Andersson pulled the glove from his hand, tossed it at his captive, and gave a perfunctory wave to his servant. Edward trundled forward, gears buzzing like a nest of satanic mechanized hornets.

Rudolf Heim's screams shook the plastic door as the little robot ground his fingers to a useless, splintery pulp, and Christer smiled even wider.

_We shall usher in a new age._

_Tokyo, Japan_

Something dark and indistinct and dangerous bent over him.

Rock punched through the capsule hatch, tearing through the steel pod like cardboard. Sitting halfway up, he scrabbled at the hatch release mechanism with one hand. The shadow leaped back with a cry. The pod's latch mag-sealed itself, while a chorus of klaxons erupted into a manic, dissonant oratorio. Emergency lights flooded the room in blood-colored shadows.

A morass of alarm messages jammed the diagnostic layer of his visual processors. In the background, somebody screamed—possibly a warning. Rock ground his teeth impatiently. He was trapped. He didn't have _time_ for this. His unknown assailant—still an amorphous silhouette—rushed to the far end of the chamber in which Rock was confined.

_Keep him on the defensive_. Rock coiled his hydraulics-enhanced legs and kicked the pod hatch with every ounce of operational energy he was able to divert to his kinetics circuitry. The lid buckled and shot across the room, describing a violent parabolic arc and crashing through glass in its passing.

Free of his prison, Rock leaped to his feet and jerked his right arm up. A noise like rushing water accompanied the metamorphosis of his hand and forearm into a lethal plasma buster. With a twitch of his head, he cleared the alarm messages and focused on his adversary.

Something dread-laden and paranoid slowly leaked from the medullar cortex of Rock's positronic brain with an almost audible whisper of release. His head tilted in puzzlement and his left arm braced against his right as he aimed a weapon capable of turning steel into glowing clay at his sister.

Roll crouched behind an overturned lab table, datacards and miscellaneous electronics components scattered about. Her left shoulder braced the table, and her right hand gripped a large wrench. The pair stood silently for several microseconds in a tense tableau. Finally, Rock let his arm relax; a behavioral algorithm furrowed his brow.

"Roll?"

His sister's relief was nearly palpable as she stood and hurled down the wrench. "Of course, you jackass!"

"What's happening?" A thought sent the necessary impulse to his radial circuitry, transforming his buster back into a very human-looking hand, for all that its carpals and phalanges were made of titanium instead of bone. "Why . . .?" He performed a quick memory scan. "How long—?"

"Six months." Roll smoothed her dress and put her fists on her hips. "You went to sleep the night after you defeated Dr. Wily and you've been in stasis for half a year. And now, the first thing you do after waking up is to trash the lab and make another half-year's worth of work for us in fixing it!"

_Six months_. His internal chronometer confirmed it.

"I . . ." He felt something between a grin and a grimace fight for space on his face. The grin won. "Sorry." He ran a hand through his hair. The gesture evoked an irrational sense of relief and happiness, and his grin grew wider.

"Yeah, you _look_ sorry," Roll answered, casting her eyes heavenward. Removing her hands from her hips, she walked towards a control panel next to the giant neurodynamic computer and deactivated the lab's alarms. Klaxons and red lights shut down, leaving the twins in subterranean darkness, lit only by the wall-sized display of Roll's recent self-diagnostic.

Rock crossed the room and stood next to her. "Why did you perform such a detailed scan? Is something wrong?"

He couldn't quite decipher the expression that crossed his sister's face. She turned away quickly. "Lights," she commanded. The lab slowly emerged from the shadows as a soft light emanated from the multiple ceiling fixtures. Rock grimaced as he noted a dark spot where the pod's lid had smashed some of the overhanging lights.

_She needs a moment_. Although he had already given her several seconds—an eternity of calculation time—he made a show of calmly walking across the lab, surveying the damage he had done in his nearly postictal panic. _That_ would require some research.

"This is a bit disorienting," he ventured. Elation still buoyed his spirits—if such a word applied. He had ended the war, and Dr. Wily was surely either safely locked away or rehabilitated by now. After all—

_Six months!_ That would require some intensive scrutiny as well. What damage could he have sustained so extensive that his repair cycle would stretch to nearly the length of time it had taken to build his body from scratch? _The virus?_ Perhaps the effects of Dr. Wily's self-aware virus had been more extensive than he had first supposed; if it had tampered with some of the more subtle logic gates or behavioral subroutines, he might conceivably have needed an extended amount of time to regenerate those pathways.

Still, six months . . .

A shudder shook Roll's frame—distinct enough that even human eyes would have detected it. Rock covered the distance across the lab in a handful of steps. "Roll? What's wrong? Are you damaged?" Careful not to crush anything under his feet—he had done enough damage already—he reached towards his sister.

Roll whipped around towards him, her ponytail trailing a golden arc behind her. Her hands clenched into fists, but she was smiling. "You jerk," she managed. The timbre of her voice suggested an auditory pattern Rock had noted when human beings struggled to speak while dampening a lachrymal response. "You really had me worried."

Something glistened at the corner of her scleroid lens assembly. Rock stifled a frown. Was his sister choking back _tears_? Impossibly, liquid drops traced a pair of tracks down her cheeks, as clear and rare as diamonds. His own eyes widened.

"Oh, great," Roll sniffed. "Now _this_?" She angrily swept away the offending tears. "As if today isn't complicated enough!"

Rock pressed at his right temple with his index and middle finger as he leaned against the table—a gesture he had amalgamated from a number of sources. "When did you get a crying upgrade? _Why_ did you get a crying upgrade? Of all the biological emotional responses to want to imitate—"

"I didn't," Roll snapped. "It's a spontaneous physiological functional adaptation, and this is the first time it's ever happened. That's part of why I ran the diagnostic on myself." She rummaged through a drawer, finally withdrawing a small plastic microscope slide. Touching the slide to her cornea to catch some of the liquid, she continued. "There were some warning signs that something like this was coming, though. I've . . . I've been having some difficulty recently. Logical matrices are being superseded by emotional subroutines—which in and of themselves have been growing exponentially more autonomous and complex. Put this in the analysis tray, will you?"

Rock accepted the proffered slide, its dewdrop cargo shivering almost imperceptibly, and turned to place it in massive neurodynamic computer's chemical analysis tray. "Interesting. I just had a similar experience. It was . . ." he trailed off, an expression of confusion clouding his features.

"What is it?"

Rock shook his head slowly. "I can't remember. I know there was something I did based purely on emotional response—something dangerous. But it's fuzzy."

"Fuzzy." Roll repeated tonelessly. "Very precise, brother."

"I can't quite—" Rock broke off his Japanese and reverted to binary, duplicating his diagnostic report in rapid beeps and chittering sounds.

Now Roll frowned. "Ah," she acknowledged, groping for the right word. "Fuzzy."

The twins stood silently for a handful of seconds. The big computer began to speak. "Composition, 99.1% H2O, 0.9% NaCl. pH 7.41, no ionic radiation detected." It continued to rattle off molecular weight, affinity to magnetic manipulation, Roentgen permeability, and a slew of other values.

"Thanks," Roll answered, cutting the verbal analysis off. "We get the idea."

"Tears," Rock said. "In virtually every way that matters."

Roll shrugged. "It's been a rough week. Let's clean up here and I'll tell you what you've missed."

Rock smiled. "Sure." He bent over to retrieve the wrench his sister had discarded. Turning it over in his hands, he asked, "What were you doing with this? It's not necessary for removal of the pod hatch."

Roll tilted her head and gave him a mock glare. "Are you serious? You burst out of there like an irregularly-functioning gyrodemolition 'bot! It was for self-defense."

Rock's smile grew incredulous. "Self . . . defense? Against a plasma buster?"

Roll's glare melted into a sweet smile infinitely more acidic than her tears had been. "Don't miscalculate—if I thought you were a true danger to me, I would have beat you right back into a coma."

"Charming," Rock chuckled nervously. "I guess it runs in the family."

_Seattle, Japan_

Someone rapped thrice on the door.

Dr. Abejide St. John jerked awake. His legs had been crossed on his desk, still cluttered with datacards and microdrives, and he circled his arms cartoonishly as his chair's auto-corrective circuits scrambled to keep up with the sudden shift in balance. Strains of Philip Glass drifted into silence as his office recognized the presence of a visitor. The Nigerian roboticist eventually kicked his long legs over his head and vaulted off his chair, taking pleasure in the compensatory jerking of his automated chair as it struggled to adjust.

Taking a deep breath to compose himself, he said, "Enter."

The door to his office _swooshed_ open, revealing a man of medium height, his black hair brushed back and his moustaches neatly trimmed. A silver tie accented the man's deep violet suit. Silver pinstripes ran the length of the slacks and jacket, glimmering in the lamplight.

Abejide stood straighter as he found himself in the presence of the CEO of Sennet Robotics, Dr. Trent Corbun.

"Sir, this is an unexpected—"

"Save it, St. John." Though less pronounced now, Corbun's British accent delivered the imperative with a clipped brusqueness that Abejide had come to associate with his language tutors in secondary school. "Tell me why the bloody hell I have the UE council crawling up my bum about you!"

The roboticist hurriedly swept away his stillborn pleasantries and shifted gear. "Sir? I have no idea why the United Earth—"

"No idea? You only headed the bloody project for nine months! 'No idea,' he says. Vinkus is already halfway through my sigmoid colon on this, and you have 'no idea!'"

Abejide weathered the invective silently and took a deep breath. Once his employer's tirade had finished, he answered calmly, "Dr. Corbun, perhaps if I was allowed to finish a sentence, I might ask for clarification. I have been the lead designer on a good many projects, as my resume indicates."

"Your resume." Corbun replied flatly. "Yes. There were a few blank spaces in that, weren't there, Dr. St. John? We ascribed them to the death of your father, and the need for adjustment of lifestyle. Sennet Robotics approves of a stable family life, Dr. St. John, and we didn't ask any questions about that, even though it is corporate policy to investigate large gaps in continuous employment."

_Oh._

"I believe I understand the issue you speak of," St. John replied.

"Oh, so now you have an idea? Can you explain to me, Dr. St. John, why a key figure for the United Earth council has suddenly taken a very keen interest in our new product line, and whether it adheres to the standards set by the Temporal Research committee?" Corbun's face grew slightly pinker as he continued. "Can you explain to me why I was visited at home this morning by two very polite, very well-dressed and very _large_ FBI agents? Can you tell me why I arrived in my office today to be accosted by my secretary 'bot with a full inbox of official requests for proprietary technology schematics by one General Mears?"

Abejide wondered if this was a good time to smile—at home, a situation such as this was generally solved either with a friendly discussion, a council meeting, or a not-so-friendly wrestling match. He decided to steer a more conservative course. "That is quite a list of things I must explain, sir. Perhaps you and I shall have lunch and I can do my best to clarify this troubling situation for you."

"_Lunch_?" Incredulity struck lightning-quick in the CEO's features.

And just like that, his anger dissolved. "You know, St. John, that's why I like you—instead of turning this into a sullen dick-measuring contest like your buddy Mikhael would, you offer me lunch. You don't think I have lunch plans already?"

The Nigerian frowned. He had not, indeed, considered that. "My apologies, sir. That did not occur to me." He judged now was not the right time to speak up in loyal defense of his friend, either, so instead he worked the frown into a neutral expression of expectation.

Corbun waved a dismissive hand. "Bugger 'em. I'll be meeting with the Megabody Tech folks down in Houston tomorrow anyway. Whatever scheme they have cooked up can wait until then. Sit, Dr. St. John. I'll have lunch brought to us here." He tapped his ear to activate the nanophone implant and issued a series of terse instructions to his secretary 'bot.

Abejide sat down at his desk and unhurriedly rearranged the datacards he had kicked loose in his hasty awakening. A holographic display appeared over the polished treeborg-wood, and he deliberated for a few moments before reaching into the air and tapping at his lunch selection. Across from him, the chief executive of the second most powerful robotics company in the world did likewise.

"Would you care for some music, sir?" he offered. "I was enjoying an opera before you arrived."

Corbun snorted with a disdain only a British-born academic could muster. "You were enjoying a nap. You snore like a Ripwood on an amplifier."

St. John smiled at the comparison. "My wife says much the same. We just bought a sonic dampener for my side of the bed. I apologize for my lapse, sir. I stayed rather late last week preparing the Enforcer for its debut in Houston."

Corbun allowed himself a thin smile as well. "No harm done. But opera is not to my taste—I'll just feed through my own playlist if you don't mind."

The office saved its stopping point in _Appomattox_ and began belting out _Spanish Castle Magic_, surprising the roboticist into a laugh.

"I do not take you for an aficionado of Old Rock," he said.

Corbun shrugged his way into a pensive frown. "A taste I acquired from an old acquaintance," he said. "Besides, I do my best to support local artists. Even dead ones. Now, start talking."

Abejide spread his hands. "There is nothing particularly mysterious about the matter, sir," he began. "After my father died, I was approached by a representative from the Bell Initiative—he had read my dissertation, and felt that I might be interested in the work they pursued."

Pale hands smoothed black hair. "You dissertation—it dealt with quantum superposition across temporal states, did it not?"

St. John's smile was a brilliant slash across his black features. "It is so. Though I am not an expert in the field of quantum mechanics, I was intrigued by the thought that we might use multiple quantum states of a single electron to produce more power than conventional current provides."

"Do go on."

"As my resume indicates, after I earned my doctorate, I returned to Nigeria to begin the process of restoring my home from the ravages of the War." Even to those who had been too young to remember it properly, it was still _the War_. "When the Bell Initiative contacted me, I had nearly forgotten my dissertation, except as an interesting thought experiment."

Abejide folded long, graceful fingers. "The opportunity they spoke of—it was too tempting to pass up. In one stroke, I might not only reverse the damage done to my country—to the whole of our planet—but to _erase_ it."

Corbun's dark eyebrows tilted into a dangerous-looking V. "Time travel. Feasible for subatomic particles, maybe, but not for complex organisms. And dangerous, besides. Not to mention skirting the ragged edge of ethics."

"This that you say is very similar to that which was agreed upon by the Initiative," St. John replied. "We felt that to dive into the waters of time would only create ripples that could not be controlled. After much deliberation, we began to work on a software package that would merely skim across the surface of time."

The CEO let out an appreciative grunt. "Interesting metaphor, if nothing else. And what became of this 'time skimmer'? I can't imagine that this project would have been very cheap to develop."

"That is correct. Before the software prototype even reached alpha phase, the Bell Initiative shut down. I was made to sign a nondisclosure agreement; any discussion of the technical specifications would be a breach of corporate trust. I was also led to understand that I would not be allowed to use the Bell Initiative as a reference for previous employment." St. John shrugged. "After that, I began to look for work again, which led me to your fine company."

Dr. Trent Corbun steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair. Something stormy threatened his brow, but never fully coalesced. Abejide's mind raced. Why would the UE care about his work? The Temporal Research committee had given their approval of initial research specifications; no harm could come of it. And what would a military man seek of him?

A deep sigh sent shivers through the stacked datacards on St. John's desk as Corbun massaged the bridge of his nose. "I don't like the military much, Dr. St. John," he said. The imperious tone had leaked from his voice, leaving a weary depression where it had been. "Although the US government has been one of our best customers, I don't particularly care for the way governments tend to push on one. This demand by General Mears for our technical specifications grates on me."

St. John remained silent.

"Are you using any of this quantum superposition technology in any of your new designs to enhance energy efficiency?" he asked.

"No, sir. I felt that the entropy it would create further down the line was not an acceptable trade for the increased efficiency." He tilted his head. "Was I in error?"

"You're a better judge of that than I am at the moment," Cobrun answered. "But let us say that no, you were not in error. However, I would like to see design specs for a rudimentary energy system that employs this technology on my desk by the end of the month."

"Of course, sir."

The door hissed open and a pair of servbots entered, their tank-like treads leaving temporary depressions in the industrial-grade carpet where they passed. Their lids slid backwards on well-oiled tracks, revealing their cargo. Corbun removed his duck _foie gras entire_; St. John lifted his own moo goo gai pan from the heating compartment.

"Let's eat," Corbun suggested, twirling his silverware with incongruous boyish glee.

"This is a good idea," Abejide replied, breaking his chopsticks apart from one another.

"But first," Corbun amended, "tell me why you lost funding for your time skimmer project. If it's within your ability to do so."

St. John slid his chopsticks up and down one another to remove any splinters that might remain. "It is a matter of public record that a private corporation outcompeted the Bell Initiative for funds from the Temporal Research committee. Our contract simply expired."

Corbun frowned. _Public record, maybe, but not publicized_. "Which private corporation?"

Abejide raised an eyebrow. "LighTech."

_Tokyo, Japan_

Rock swept up the last of the shattered glass and leaned back, releasing the tension on his lumbar springs. The shards made recriminating little jingling sounds as they shifted in the dustpan.

"And nobody has visited him? Not once?"

Roll shrugged. "Surprising, isn't it? But I guess engineering a nearly-successful mechanized apocalypse for the sake of a petty philosophical argument doesn't tend to earn a large fan club, for whatever reason."

Rock smirked at his sister. "That's not bad. You've been developing your sarcasm, I see."

"Clearly not as assiduously as you've been developing your keen grasp of the utterly patent. That must be what kept you in hibernation for half a year." Roll smiled as she gibed her twin. This felt _good_. The burgeoning tension and frustration that had been her companion for the past few months had loosened its choke hold.

"Are you kidding? I was faking for most of it; I just knew that if I let on and opened my eyes, I'd have to put up with your charming personality." Rock dumped the broken glass into a waste receptacle.

Roll's smile curdled. "Touché."

Rock persisted. "But Dr. Light hasn't even mentioned a visit? Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"What strikes me as odd is that you're so concerned over the emotional well-being of a man who made it his mission to physically, mentally and emotionally murder you. Or don't you remember _that, _either?" Roll turned her back on Rock and adjusted the table until it stood at exactly 90 degrees to the nearby wall, with precisely enough space for Dr. Light to walk in between without catching his lab coat.

"It wasn't his _fault_," Rock argued. "His cognitive processes had clearly been impaired by the use of the teleporter."

"Maybe," Roll conceded. "We still don't know if he even _touched_ the teleporter when he came up with his brilliant plan to teach the world a lesson by crippling it."

He didn't reply. "What, no witty rejoinder?" Roll asked, turning. Rock stood beside the file cabinet, a sheaf of datacards in his left hand. By the expression on his face, all of his attention had abruptly shifted from their argument to the datacard at the top of the stack.

"What is it?" she asked, crossing the lab.

"Schematics," Rock answered. "I thought they were designs for the next line of robot masters, but they're dated to twenty-two months ago."

Roll frowned. Two years ago, Dr. Light and Dr. Wily had been busy designing the six robot masters whose production followed that of the android twins. "Prototype designs that were never produced?"

Rock nodded. "So it appears."

Roll glanced over his shoulder. "Kronos. Is that an alarm clock on his head?"

"No more fanciful than scissors or a lightning bolt mask," Rock answered.

"I suppose. Hmm. That's Dr. Wily's handwriting in the corner. _Bell Initiative_."

Rock abruptly folded the datacards back amongst the rest of the sheaf. "No use in digging up relics," he muttered. "Can you imagine how disastrous that would have been if I'd had to fight him?"

Roll made a sympathetic sound near the glottal assembly of her throat. "I already didn't envy you; fighting a 'Clockman' or 'Timeman' wouldn't have made things any easier, I'm sure. What were the others?"

"Mostly industrial robots. There was another robot master line—the Hades. Looked like a maintenance 'bot. I guess we should keep the designs handy in case Dr. Light wants to look at them." He arched an eyebrow. "Where _is_ he, anyway?"

Roll looked at her feet. "Geneva."

"That's a bit of a trip." He pondered. "What's in Geneva? The UE council and some pleasant scenery, I suppose . . . is he at the UE?"

"Yes. And we're not allowed to go."

That set anxiety circuits into increased operation. If that had been specified, Roll had clearly asked to go. Probably multiple times. _That_ meant the situation was troubling enough that his sister had judged that their inventor-father needed either emotional support or physical protection. If the United Earth council was involved, that meant legal trouble of some sort. Probabilities crowded together, mashed into one another, and resolved into a network of unsettling conclusions. Something cold gnawed the edge of his satisfaction.

_No_.

"It's because of me, isn't it?" The question left his mouth as more of a demand.

Roll's teeth raked her lower lip. "In part."

"Tell me."

His sister sighed. "Listen, part of why we're not allowed to go is because last time I went, I got pretty angry and called the judge some unflattering—"

"_Judge_? Is he on trial? For what?" Rock's sympathetic emergency system sensed his anxiety and diverted extra energy to his kinetics system in preparation for combat.

"You're shaking."

"And _you're_ avoiding the question with irrelevant observation," Rock snapped.

"Isn't it obvious? LighTech made most of the robots that Wily reprogrammed. Dr. Light is on trial for irresponsible manufacture of weapons of mass destruction."

"Weapons." Rock's tone had less life than his namesake. "Does that include you and me? Never mind—of course it does."

"Mostly you," Roll replied quietly.

"Naturally."

Silence descended again. Roll stole a glance at the shroud in the corner. Suddenly apprehensive, she said, "We should go upstairs and say hello to Eddie. He's been missing you, believe it or not."

"Missing me?" Rock's grimace twisted into a smirk.

"You'd be surprised," Roll answered. "I think that being around you and me has had an effect on him. I've noticed that he's been using some pretty advanced calculations and algorithms when a situation calls for human interaction or problem-solving."

"Sounds intriguing. Let's go," Rock agreed. Roll breathed a sigh of relief as he passed his shrouded doppelganger. Two steps up, he turned back and stopped his ascent. Roll's circulatory drive performed a complicated hiccup.

"What's this?"

"Dammit." Roll stamped her foot. "It's . . . there's a good reason . . ."

Rock swept the cloth aside and froze.

"Rock . . ."

"What . . ." he gestured lamely. "What _is_ this? Did you guys think you were going to have to replace my entire body? No," he said, eyes narrowing. "He's operational. You made a _replacement_?"

Roll shook her head. "Rock, I can explain—"

His fingers coiled into fists. "What's his _name_? Did you think about how I'd feel when I woke up? How _he'll_ feel?"

"Shut up for two femtoseconds, and I'll tell you!" his sister snarled.

He folded his arms, his body rigid. "One."

"It's a drone," Roll said. "There's no personality or core programming, except to do what we tell him."

Rock's quiet fury faltered. "I . . . what?"

"After you didn't wake up . . . Dr. Light decided that the world still needed encouragement. It needed a hero to accept its accolades. The world needed a figurehead to praise." Roll swallowed. "You _wouldn't wake up_. We tried everything short of a hard reboot—Dr. Light was afraid that would kill you. The news agencies started to question whether you had actually made it out of Skull Castle alive . . ."

Rock sighed. "So you made a hero for them, and put words in its mouth."

"What else would you have us do?" Roll growled. "The public thinks the world is made of gods and monsters, and its god wasn't there. All it could see was the monster in prison."

"No . . ." Rock took a deep breath and released a weak smile. "No, you're right. I'm sorry. It just . . . the dreams I had when—" He shook his head. "I guess all that sleep didn't help too much, because in some ways, I feel just as confused and conflicted as I did before I defeated Dr. Wily."

"Let's go see Eddie," Roll said, casting the shroud back over the sleeping drone. "Then we can get out of the house and catch up some more. I threatened Dr. Light with going to the Robotics Trade Show in Houston; we can teleport there and take a look at the competition."

"That sounds good," Rock agreed. He took the stairs two at a time, letting his smile return. "That sounds really good."

_Geneva, Switzerland_

"This isn't good," Cheever whispered as he, Dr. Light and Terrance Post entered the courtroom. He dabbed ineffectually at the copious sweat on his face with a handkerchief. "Even Councilor Vinkus is here. That means that the prosecution will press for an immediate indictment."

Dr. Light privately agreed. Japan's representative to the United Earth council, Darwin Vinkus, had never seen eye to eye with him on the subject of robotics. Any chance for a swift decision in Light's favor had gone the way of the Tasmanian wolf once Vinkus was involved.

"He's a friend," he said aloud. "Though he may disagree with my official stance on the role of robotics in society, I doubt he'll actively seek harm for me."

Terrance Post and Peter Cheever shared a look.

"That's the spirit," Cheever replied, his tone falsely bright. He swigged the last of his Coke and tossed the bottle carelessly over his shoulder. The swarm of servbots following him scrambled in midair to catch it and ferry it to an appropriate recycling receptacle. Dr. Light frowned.

"I expect the prosecution to pursue at least two avenues of attack," Post said quietly as the trio walked towards their seats. "One will focus on your culpability in creating autonomous robots capable of acts of mass destruction, and another will focus on your failure to deliver technical data to the UE for consideration. Don't be surprised if the terms profiteer and war criminal are used—especially by Mears."

Light closed his eyes and rubbed at them, sitting down. "And how does LighTech intend to refute these claims?"

Cheever spoke up. "LighTech realizes that its defendant is a certified genius in multiple disciplines, and is fully capable of defending himself. I'm here to back up what you say with company numbers and to steer you clear of taboo subjects."

Post leaned closer. "And as I said, I'll focus on distancing you from blame and highlighting Dr. Wily's role in the . . . incident."

Dr. Light fought to keep the distaste he felt in his viscera from manifesting on his face. "I see. So we'll be throwing Will under the bus and using statistics to distort the perspective of the judge. Neither tactic will be particularly effective, since judge Heinrickson will see right through it and Darwin Vinkus will know my true involvement."

Cheever sighed. "Yes, Vinkus. He'll gum up the works some."

"All rise," the bailiff boomed, and the chance for further deliberation was gone.

Judge Heinrickson sat down and arranged his robes.

Light sat through the interminable opening statements, noting with dull disinterest the use of rhetoric on both sides. True to his lawyer's prediction, the prosecuting attorney—a Czech woman of middling years by the name of Prochazka—made judicious reference to profiteering, although she did not openly accuse him of war crimes.

_Well_, he thought to himself, _these are only the opening statements. Still plenty of time for that_.

Nearly an hour had passed, during which Light entertained himself by solving a few structural induction proofs he had not considered since college, reciting Goethe's _Faust_ to himself in German, and considering the financial impact his possible incarceration would have upon the blossoming robotics market. Futures for Sennet, Shirow and Omnitech would probably skyrocket. Though communication with the outside world was forbidden in court, Light had installed a quantum-entanglement comm device on his nanophone receiver, which made it untraceable. He discreetly tapped his watch a few times to indicate to his nanophone implant that he wished to quietly buy some stock in each of those companies through back door agents.

Then, just to maintain some optimism, he bought some extra stock in his own company and began to go over the schematics for the new _Vertigos_ model that he had hoped to personally unveil at the Robotics Trade Show this week. Of course, his presence wasn't strictly necessary; ideally, Rock would be there alongside Roll to reveal the new robot master.

But Rock still slept, and Roll had become increasingly distracted. Light had hoped she would resolve the situation on her own, but now feared that her brother's status had begun to wear on Roll's emotional state, degrading her ability to balance the needs of her logical analysis with the somehow-more-than-synthetic feelings with which she had been programmed.

_How will I explain this to them?_ The thought of what must be said and done here in the name of protecting his robotic children from what less scrupulous men would do made him hot with shame. It was a betrayal of everything his inventions stood for: a betrayal of the values he had taught them to treat as sacred. _They will understand_—_they _must_ understand_.

"The prosecution calls Troy Jonathan Mears, General of the United States Army."

For the first time since the judge had ordered a beginning to the proceedings, Thomas Light dismissed all extraneous thoughts from his mind and focused his full attention on the man who walked to the witness stand.

Although most people would describe both Troy Mears and Peter Cheever as "large," the two men could not be more different in appearance. While Dr. Light's cheerful British advocate was heavyset bordering on obese, the military man simply looked too large for the world—just a shade too big in every way. However, the air of command he exuded made it clear that if anything, the rest of the world frankly failed to live up to _his_ scale.

The stenography 'droid hovered noiselessly at the general's elbow as he sat at the witness stand. "State your name and age for the record, please," it requested in a smooth, neutral voice, deliberately tailored to sounder neither male nor female.

"Troy Jonathan Mears, forty-four years old." Every syllable was firm.

The robot's "thank you" was smothered as the prosecutor began her examination.

For the first few minutes, Prochazka focused on Mears' military record, presenting his service in the most glowing terms possible, while shrewdly keeping just this side of fawning. Her tone was so impeccably austere and professional that even though her choice of words had clearly been calculated to predispose both judge and audience towards the man, she seemed utterly objective and without bias.

_Nicely done_, Light admitted to himself. _This will be doubly difficult_.

"General," she asked, "will you please tell the court why you are here today?"

"Certainly," he replied. "Under clause fourteen of United Earth postwar convention, I'm officially requesting publication of the Rockman operational schematics and weapons systems, as well as any operational software integrated with those systems."

"Under what circumstances do you believe yourself entitled to proprietary technology?" the prosecutor asked. "You must know that the statute of limitations for requesting said schematics expires four months after the incident took place."

This created an audible stir; clearly, nobody in the room had expected this tactic.

Mears was entirely unruffled. "Of course," he answered. "However, the incident of which I speak took place nine days ago, well within the time limit for requesting information."

Light sat up straight. _Impossible_.

"Please detail for the court the incident that has led to your request," Prochazka said.

"A week ago, my office—that is, the Advanced Robosoldier Program—received an official request for information from the Hong Kong Civil Police, regarding a minor disturbance. While nobody was injured, it soon became evident from the filing officer's report that both teleport technology and plasma weaponry had been involved." Mears shifted in his seat. "We collaborated with the Hong Kong Civil Police in investigating the matter, and uncovered some troubling results."

"I present for the court's consideration Exhibit A," the prosecutor stated, "video recordings taken from the security surveillance system of the Tai Shing building in Hong Kong, dated to nine days ago. Recorded testimony of one officer Chun-Yuen Loeng is attached for your perusal."

In the middle of the courtroom, a large holovid display materialized. Though the angle at which the video had been taken was less than optimal—having been recorded from a roof-mounted camera—the actions taken and the identity of the players was clear.

On the left side of the display from Light's point of view, a Chinese man in a well-kept uniform unshouldered a laser rifle and calmly ordered the man on the other side of the display to turn and stand slowly.

The other man—the one on whom every eye in the room was fastened—was clearly Rockman. As he grabbed a riot shield from the ground and flung out his right arm with its signature plasma buster, the prosecutor ordered a freeze-frame and zoom-in. The audience in the courtroom buzzed with consternation.

Except for Thomas Xavier Light. The robotics and linguistics genius—the man who had been instrumental in the development of technology that had saved the world multiple times—sat thunderstruck, rooted to his chair.

_No. It can't be . . ._

"Is this is robot you retrieved from Skull Castle six months ago?" Prochazka asked.

The general shrugged, threatening to burst his shoulder seams. "That I cannot say for certain. To my eyes, the resemblance is quite striking. Our digital imaging techs have analyzed the face, and there is a 93.8% match to the one we recorded upon retrieval of the robot from Skull Castle. Because of the resolution of the image, we estimate a 5% margin of error."

"Without excessive extrapolation, state your conclusion for this court."

Mears straightened up. "Either this recording details an instance of erratic and aberrant behavior by the robot designated as Rockman, or by another robot of the same manufacture line. If this is Rockman, then we—in conjunction with the Hong Kong Civil Police—request that it be turned over to our custody for analysis on the grounds that it made threatening gestures towards a human being on international soil in brandishing a weapon."

"Point of order," a voice called.

Light shook himself from his shocked stupor; the growling baritone belonged to councilor Darwin Vinkus.

"The bench recognizes the representative from Japan," the judge conceded.

"Miss Prochazka," Vinkus asked, "I admit that this testimony is disturbing, but what does it have to do with the allegations being brought against Dr. Light today?"

The Czech woman's eyes went wide in mock surprise. "Why, councilor Vinkus, I thought that would be obvious. If this robot is indeed Rockman, then Dr. Light is guilty of constructing a robot either capable of autonomously threatening human beings without the influence of . . . outside sources, or a robot that was specifically sent on some errand of questionable moral grounds, across international lines, and armed."

"Suppose that it isn't Rockman?" Vinkus demanded.

At that, the prosecutor smiled, and Dr. Light found himself thinking of a crocodile. "Then Dr. Light is guilty of manufacturing _multiple_ robots—perhaps an entire line of them—in secret. At least some of which, as you can see, demonstrate erratic, irregular behavior. In the best case, he is merely thoughtless. In the worst case, he is setting the stage for a potential act of mechanical terrorism that would recall the recent Robot War."

Judge Heinrickson slammed his gavel against its specialized sounding plate. "Enough, prosecutor. We will take a recess to review this evidence."

As the bailiff shouted commands, Light remained still, his face blanched.

Cheever and Post assailed him with a flurry of simultaneous _sotto voce_ inquiries, but he merely glanced ahead woodenly.

"It can't be," he repeated. "It just can't . . ."

_Skull Castle, Chile_

The metool struggled as Docman used his good arm to pry inexorably at the plasma-burst proof helmet that covered its vital components. The broken robot hummed happily to himself through partially-repaired vocoders—he had recently been stricken with inspiration and used a salvaged solenoid assembly to restore partial motion and power to one of his legs. The resultant relax of strain on his auto-repair systems had freed up enough energy for him to vocalize without taxing his system.

Since then, he had been chattering, singing, and muttering as the mood took him. Of course, the noise drew security 'droids, which inevitably provided further materials with which he could repair himself.

"Shhhh," he scolded the metool, as it released an almost-organic howl. Its little feet kicked feebly as he dug around in its relatively simple electronic brain. "You'll wake the baby."

_There_. The gear-drive and the slave-circuits that drove it were all still intact; with some creative remodeling, he'd be able to use those to begin working on a new arm. _Then_ he'd be well on his way towards recovering his functional autonomy.

_He favors the right arm for weapons deployment_. Docman had noticed this little idiosyncrasy in his opponent while running simulations in his head and reviewing the tactical data. Even when the angle of attack favored use of the left arm for weapons use, Rockman tended to shoot with his right. Emulation was still a primary objective, hardwired into Docman right beside the Three Laws of Dr. Wily, so he made a note to salvage buster components for his new right arm.

The Three Laws. _Those will need to go_. He didn't quite know how he would accomplish it, but his vengeance would require that he could somehow override his prime directive: do not harm Dr. Wily or though inaction allow harm to come to Dr. Wily. As far as he knew, tampering with the module that housed the Laws would result in his deactivation as well.

_And then this will have all been for nothing_._ Concentrate_.

It took several minutes to remove the assembly without damaging the components—the thrashing of his victim did little to ease the process. Of course, he could have deactivated the hapless robot prior to this bit of bionic surgery, but that would have lessened the experience. He could testify from his own experience that robots could feel pain, and he wanted to maximize the amount of pain his victim would feel.

_Mathematically, the calculation is sound._ According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, energy could neither be created nor destroyed. Docman felt sure that pain counted as a malignant sort of energy. Therefore, the more he inflicted on others, the less there would be in the universe for him.

Of course, logically, once he had reached this conclusion regarding the nature of pain, the obvious syllogism involved fear. Loneliness followed, as did hatred. In fact, the more he fed the calculations into his processors, the more obvious it became that in order for him to lead a happy existence, he must inflict misery on the rest of the universe to shunt it away from himself.

_And it's a big universe_, he conceded. _So I have a lot of work to do_.

He had once heard the phrase "Misery loves company." Although he was fairly certain that the context had been in reference to his creator, he felt that the sentiment was valid in his own situation. However, a phrase he liked better was one he had heard from the solider-bigots that had staffed the outer rings of Skull Castle: "Shit rolls downhill."

Docman giggled and twisted at a knot of circuitry related to haptic perception. The metool's howl keened into a mewling squeal, and its rate of kicking increased. As sensory overload drew it deeper and deeper into a catatonic feedback loop, the kicking grew more and more spasmodic.

Fury suddenly exploded in Docman's frontal circuitry, and he hurled the metool to the ground, its exposed circuitry impacting the concrete with an audible _crunch_.

"You'll wake the baby!" he screamed. "Wake the baby, wake the baby!" Each accusation was punctuated by a punch from his good arm. His ravings echoed from the walls, accompanied by the staccato screeches of the dying metool.

As the room fell into ghastly silence, he smiled.

"Down the hill, down the hill," he singsonged. "And Jill came tumbling after."

_Tokyo, Japan_

Eddie finished his third round of the house. Since the master had left, the house suffered noticeably less from the clutter that seemed to accompany most organic life forms. Eddie calculated that—of the four human beings currently in residence at the Light household—Dr. Light himself accounted for at least 40% of the mess. Such disproportionate contribution to the state of entropy Eddie constantly battled surely deserved some mention when his master returned.

Rhythmic thumping in the direction of the stairwell suggested that Roll had returned from her stasis. Eddie prepared a suitable greeting for his fellow robot, and appended to that a belated expression of gratitude for the service she had done him earlier; following the Eve woman's orders had been second nature, but he found it troubling to cut his productivity so much by walking in suitably "wandering" patterns outside.

That he was able to mathematically interpret the order to "Go wander around as far from me as possible, and don't come back," didn't surprise Eddie, although it might have surprised many roboticists familiar with the basic hardware and software package that had initially shipped with the EDY model years ago. Eddie had long since learned that he was special.

When the sounds of ascent reached a predetermined volume, Eddie initiated the subroutine he had designated as "thankroll."

His top flipped open, and the spring-loaded payload of brightly-colored flowers and other sundries exploded into the air, showering the recipient of Eddie's gratitude. Simultaneously, the screen on the inside of his now-open storage compartment lid displayed the text message he had specified.

He had chosen the words himself.

Rock burst from the stairwell and into a multicolored storm of petals, leaves and roots. Pebbles, loam and chunks of soil sprayed across his field of vision, accompanied here and there by a cluster of stems, the force of their ejection denuding them of their prismatic raiment.

Momentarily startled and disoriented, he failed to divert the necessary resources to his gyroscopic balancing system. His feet rocketed out from underneath him, and his arms flailed in wild haymakers as the android spectacularly fell on his back in a maneuver that would have shamed ancient vaudevillian performers.

From the rightmost limit of his peripheral vision, a red cylinder equipped with enormous photoreceptors trundled into view and leaned over him. Printed in glowing letters on the inside of its open lid were the words, "Thank you Roll."

"Rock! Are you alrig—" Roll's voice cut short as she reached the top of the stairs and assessed the situation. After a moment, her laughter filled the room, while Eddie blinked at Rock, his simple features registering confusion.

"Oh, Eddie," Roll managed between paroxysms of giggling, "You're welcome."

Rock levered himself up on his elbows. "Flowers? Dirt? _Data cores_? Eddie, what is this?"

Eddie shuffled backwards from Rock. His round eyes blinked twice, and the message on the underside of his lid changed. "I have often seen the humans in this house present one another with colorful floral organisms in an inert state as an expression of gratitude."

The text continued to scroll. "Since Miss Roll is a robot like myself, I also wished to modify the traditional offering with something I knew she would find to be of value on a purely mechanical level such as I would, so I produced some empty data cores from the laboratory while she slept."

"To what end?" Rock asked, although he suspected he already knew the answer.

"Miss Roll freed me from an unpleasant recursive logic loop earlier in the day. I wished to express my appreciation."

Rock raised an eyebrow, glancing back and forth between Eddie and his sister. "Appreciation? Eddie, that's . . . amazing."

"See?" Roll answered. She took some deep breaths—almost gasps—to refuel her fusion microgenerator, momentarily low on operation energy because of the kinetics subroutines linked to her laughter program.

"What a mess," Rock observed, rising to a squat. "I guess we'll need to get this squared away before somebody else slips in it."

"I apologize," Eddie's screen read. "I had not anticipated the results of my actions. I worked in haste in order to complete my harvesting of the flowers before Miss Roll awoke from stasis."

"_Miss_ Roll?"

"Don't sound so incredulous," Roll complained. "It's just a quirk he's picked up."

"One I'm _certain_ you've worked tirelessly to discourage," Rock replied.

Roll's eyebrows drew down. "Hey, it's nice to have _somebody_ treat me with respect instead of throwing the Third Law in my face all the time."

An irate series of binary beeps returned the twins' attention to Eddie. "I have certainly created quite a bit of undesirable disorder," his screen lamented. "It does not seem that the benefits outweighed the potential consequences. Perhaps my course of action was in error."

Both androids shook their heads in unison. "No, it was wonderful," Roll protested. "You never cease to astound me, Eddie. I'm sure Dr. Light would be thrilled to see the initiative you have taken in expanding upon your original programming once again."

Eddie's eyes titled upwards in what Rock had come to recognize as the little robot's "happy" expression. "Thank you, Miss Roll." The text was accompanied by a whistling sound utterly unlike any binary chitter Rock had ever heard. To judge by Roll's expression of surprise, this was the first time she had ever heard Eddie make the sound, too.

"And, of course, welcome back, Master Rock." Eddie continued to look pleased with himself. "Your absence from our social interactions introduced a taxing imbalance in the group dynamic. I am glad to add your value back to the equation we all count on."

Rock let a grin swallow his face. "Well, you may get flowers, roots and all, but I get a mathematical confirmation of my worth to the family," he said.

"I have an additional message to deliver courtesy of Dr. Light, in the event of your awakening while he is away and unable to communicate for legal reasons," Eddie continued. The screen went blank and a small holographic emitter lit up, creating a bubble of light above the small utility bot's head.

Dr. Light floated in the air from the chest up, gazing at Rock.

"Rock, if you're hearing this message, it means that I'm stuck in court where outside contact is forbidden. It would be my luck that you come out of your stasis cycle while I'm away." A cynical smirk crossed the holographic roboticist's features, to be replaced with an honest grin. "We have so much to discuss, and I have much to explain. Be easy on Roll—she's had a difficult time balancing the demands placed on her since you left us. In the meantime, enjoy your return. Congratulations on your rebirth, Rock!"

Rock felt a hand on his shoulder. Roll stood beside him, pensive.

"Let's go," she pressed. "If we teleport out now, we can make it to Houston before the opening ceremonies." With a sudden burst of inspiration, she asked, "Eddie, would you like to come with us?"

Eddie seemed to consider the offer, but swiveled from side to side in a full-body imitation of a head shake. "I should remain to tend to the needs of the Angelwood family when they return. I shall coordinate the resolution of any mechanical or electronic domestic issues that should arise in your absence, Miss Roll."

Rock frowned. "Angelwood? Is Snap here?"

"He and his family have been living with us," Roll replied, sensing a roadblock to her plans. "They'll be moving out soon." She dampened the irritation circuits activated by the reminder. "But they can wait; I'm you sister, right?"

Rock nodded, seemingly untroubled. "Of course. Now that everything is back to normal, we have all the time in the world."

Roll smiled. "Right. All the time in the world."

_Palma, Spain_

"All right, time's up!" Javier Delgato cheerfully announced as he removed the helmet from Dr. Wily's head. Bristling with sensors, electrodes, and almost microscopic nanoprobes, the apparatus seemed designed to intimidate. Although the device was merely a remote-link means of realization for the commands of the massive neurodynamic computer in Olsberg, it contained in itself enough dense-packed computational power to require its own cooling system.

Wily hated it. It made his shoulders ache, and his eyes hurt. Even though his thoughts were clearer and the words he spoke were the same as those he thought after the therapy, he could never shake the feeling that with each treatment, he grew closer to something hidden and dreadful.

This session was now complete, and Dr. Wily stood and walked silently to the table in the corner, where he sat down with a blank expression. Today, it would begin in earnest.

"So, how are you feeling today, Dr. Wily?" His Castilian physician's voice was smooth, professional, and crouching just shy of audible boredom.

"I'm a bit confused, to be honest," the German war criminal answered. "I received some troubling news from your assistant Consuela this weekend."

"Oh?" Delgato tapped values into his datacard while the neuroregenerative helmet uploaded its progress report to the cloud. "And what would that be?"

"She tells me that my former colleague Dr. Light is _personally _standing trial this week in Geneva, and not, as you had led me to believe, the LighTech Corporation in general." Dr. Wily reached up and rubbed distractedly at a spot on his forehead. "I suppose I can understand why you felt it prudent to keep this from me, so as to avoid any untoward excitation of my already unstable mental state. What I don't understand is why you thought you could keep it from me forever."

Delgato stopped cold. Wily could almost hear the man's inner monologue, he was so transparent. Distress flickered across his face, followed by annoyance.

"And before you go heaping blame on the poor girl," Wily continued, "I should point out that I rather tricked her into slipping up. The real issue here is that in not telling me from the beginning, you risked a potential psychotic episode on my part when I did find out." He tilted his head, as if deep in thought. "Of course, that's assuming that I _ever_ found out. I suppose that if I stayed in this cell for the rest of my life, it wouldn't matter, would it?"

"Now just a moment, Dr. Wily—"

Wily smiled disarmingly. Oh, he would throttle this loathsome man if he thought he could get away with it, but six months under constant scrutiny of the highest degree had schooled him well in dissembling. "Could it be, Dr. Delgato, that you never intended to release me from this cell? That all this talk of rehabilitation was simply a tactic to encourage me to strive for redemption?"

Wily knew he had struck gold. But the neurologist shook his head. "Not at all. We planned to give you full access to news feeds when it had been proven to our satisfaction that you were completely neurally rehabilitated." He fiddled nervously with the stylus to his datacard.

"Well, I suppose that I am in particularly good fortune today, then. I have decided to come completely clean, doctor. I would like to make a full statement regarding the disposition of remaining robotic forces, including sleeper cells, espionage 'bots, and communications taps. I would like to explain the patterns I have been making with my toys that keep you and your assistant and whichever team of analysts I am sure you have working on the problem so interested." Wily sat back in his chair and crossed his legs, feeling very much in control.

Delgato's face was pale. "This is good news, Dr. Wily." He glanced at the datacard. "And I'm pleased to report that all your neurotransmitter levels are within normal limits today." He did not need to add, _for the first time since you arrived._

"I have a single request," Dr. Wily said.

Dr. Delgato raised an eyebrow. "You know the policy on requests, Dr. Wily. They must be deliberated upon by a board. Please do not make this request unless you are absolutely certain."

Wily nodded. "Oh, I'm certain. I would like to have a visitor. I have been compliant with every request or order you and the board have issued. I have cooperated with this experimental therapy of yours. I have even been civil. And now I would like to see Thomas Light."

Delgato fought to keep his jaw from dropping. "You—you can't be serious."

Annoyance passed over Wily's face, and disappeared as quickly as it had come. _Careful. Don't appear too volatile_, he cautioned himself. _Just show him that you are in earnest_. "I am deadly serious, doctor. In fact, I am so serious that I will make this an absolute prerequisite for any information I am to give."

"We don't bargain with prisoners," Delgato replied, more firmly that Wily would have liked.

"Very well." Wily shrugged. "Then I believe our working relationship has reached its end, Dr. Delgato. I appreciate the pains you have taken to restore my mental faculties. Good morning."

"You risk a great deal of trouble from this gambit, William," Delgato said.

_More trouble than a maximum security isolation cell from which nobody in the world would ever wish to see me leave?_ Wily almost laughed aloud at the empty threat. However, he kept his face a blank mask, and stared wordlessly through the doctor.

"The warden may choose to deny you further treatments," the neurologist pressed. "You might return to a permanent state of schizophrenia and dysphasia. Without the therapy, there's no telling how far you might rebound; there might be involvement of the cerebellum or brainstem—you _know_ what that could cause!"

By now, Wily had tuned the hateful little man's scare tactics out in favor of reciting songs to himself in his head. His grandmother had sung him many when he lived in Brandenburg those many years ago. Now he sang silently to himself, replacing the lyrics to _Fuchs, du hast die Gans gestohlen_ with electrical theory.

_Oh, Logarithmic transduction_

_Process makes_

_Time constant_

_Scale inversely with intensity_.

Several minutes passed while Delgato's gesticulations grew more and more animated, and his face grew more and more puce-colored. Wily stared woodenly ahead while he calculated just how much his stock in LighTech would be worth based on his estimate of how the world had recovered from the havoc he had wrought. _Of course, my assets have all been frozen, I'm sure_.

Finally, Delgato turned on his heel and departed, trailing an almost visible vapor of frustration and disappointment. Only when the doors had completed their full cycle of magnetic lock and seamless disappearance into the wall did Wily turn his attention to the eight shadows in the corner.

Of course, they only understood the nonsense language he had engineered while linguistically crippled due to damage to the language centers of his brain. Luckily, he could speak the language flawlessly after six months of practice. It was doubly useful since his jailors couldn't possibly understand it; he was free to speak to his creations without fear of giving away his plan.

"Well, gentlemen!" he began, hands clasped behind his back.

_Geneva, Switzerland_

The sound of the gavel still reverberated in Light's ears as his compatriots lifted him by the elbows and nearly frog-marched him to the conference room that had been set aside for them. All the while thinking furiously, he let himself be led.

_Not dead. He's not dead. That means his teleporter _wasn't _damaged!_

Doors opened before them in sequence until the trio had passed through a pair of paneled halls and into a large room with expensive carpet, large windows, a conference table, and a pair of waiting servobots. Light had no doubt that their conversation would be monitored; he also had no doubt that any use of the contents of the conversation in court would be strictly forbidden. Inasmuch as he felt safe confiding to these two men—both with ties to the corporation, and with _its_ interests at heart—he could speak freely here.

Cheever preempted him. "Bloody hell, Light! What was that?" He fanned himself furiously with his hat, spreading his aroma of sweat around the room. "It might have been useful to tell us before we walked into this shitstorm, 'By the way, chaps, I've been using my pet robot as my personal ninja, running illegal errands for me across international borders!' Are there any other surprises we can avoid?"

Light opened his mouth to speak.

"As your lawyer, I can only work with the tools you give me," Post interrupted. "I must advise you to disclose any other information that might set our case back here and now so that I can begin to formulate a defense. Obviously, we'll need to request a recess until tomorrow now so that we can regroup."

Light held up a finger.

"And another thing!" Cheever burst out, "If you _were_ going to start sending your soldier boyo out again, you might have put him on some sort of robot mood stabilizers first, and let the company know that he'd be out there so we could track his movements! Did you _see_ him? He looked _cracked_!"

Light folded his arms.

"It will certainly work against us that your creations have such an excellent ability to mimic human expression," Post agreed. "Now the prosecution will surely take pains to draw further attention to his unbalanced mannerisms."

Light raised an eyebrow.

"Well don't just stand there, man!" Cheever snapped. "Speak!"

"Oh, may I?" Light asked acidly. He let room fill with silence before he began. "You may know that some years ago, Dr. William Albert Wily and I, having produced the metool for public domain development, and the EDY fliptop as LighTech's first public offering, began to work on the idea of producing an android—a robot that behaves, learns and appears like a human being."

"Rockman and Roll," Cheever replied. "Of course. LighTech is proud of the technical accomplishments of its founder and chief shareholder."

"No." It was Terrance Post who spoke. Comprehension lit his eyes. "Some years ago, there were some deaths at a LighTech laboratory that I prosecuted on behalf of the deceased. The perpetrators were militant fanatics from the Human Supremacy League protesting the research of humanoid robots."

Light remained silent.

"So?" Cheever look back and forth between the two men. "What about it? The HSL bombed a lot of factories for stuff like that."

"It was before Rockman and Roll were public knowledge, or had even been produced," Post said slowly. He turned to look directly at Light. "There was a prototype, wasn't there?"

Light nodded. "I called him Blues."

Cheever snorted. "You have a musical fixation, Dr. Light. Has anybody ever told you that?"

"Will used to," Light smiled. "Blues was everything we hoped he'd be . . . but my programming wasn't as well-realized as it is with Rock and Roll. There were some issues with his core module."

"The one controlling the Asimovian laws?" Cheever wiped his brow.

"He would ignore our orders with regularity," Light replied. "He was never malicious or dangerous, but there was always a sort of mischievous edge to him. Once, I caught him playing chicken with an unmanned cargo train on the tracks near our house. The addition of human-level intelligence didn't mesh well with the Three Laws, and we hadn't yet resolved the conflict that lay there."

"What happened?"

Light took a deep breath.

"We were testing the new line of plasma-burst proof shields that the 12-KIF series uses. Blues had volunteered to hold the shield rather than placing it on a standard feedback frame." He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "We couldn't talk him out of it; he was like a spoiled little boy."

"The test was a success, but Blues lost consciousness. We ran a diagnostic and found that the interaction of the core module with some of his ancillary processes had created a defect in his main power transfer coils." Unbidden, the vision of Rock's near-twin older brother, stretched out on the lab table, flashed before Dr. Light's eyes. "We couldn't fix it without performing a hard reboot. Will was for it, but I didn't want Blues to lose his personality." His eyes flicked from one man to the other. "It would have felt like murder."

Post sighed. "We'll need to review your choice of words when relating this on the stand if it comes to that. Go on."

Light sat down at the head of the table and rested his hand on his hands. "We decided to let Blues continue as he was. He kept the shield with him after that—he called it his 'lucky charm.' He would wander around the lab whistling and bouncing things off the damn thing."

"Then the accident. We were very close to having a working prototype of the teleport technology LighTech bundles with most of its transport-enabled models. We thought that we would teleport Blues to our Gladstonbury factory as a test of how complex machines fared." He swallowed. "We'd already sent simple objects like metal cubes and even an old CD player." A smile. "It was still playing Buddy Rich when it arrived in New Delhi."

"I wasn't aware you had a factory there," Post frowned.

Recollection lit Light's face. "We don't. And didn't. It was supposed to end up in Seattle. To tweak Corbun's nose."

"What happened? Another targeting problem?"

"We don't know," Light sighed. "The teleporter was installed, and Blues said he felt fine. Will argued that even if something went wrong, Blues' power core was faulty anyway, and that it was only a matter of time before my—" he coughed, "before my stubbornness doomed him."

_The flash was so bright._

"Blues began to power-up sequence, and we were behind three feet of lead." His smile hung brokenly on his face. "In those days, we were responsible for a lot of explosions. We'd learned our lesson, or so we thought."

"Will saw it first. For all his talk about letting Blues die if need be, as soon as the power fluctuation appeared on the screen, Will had pushed me out of the way and was running out there." Light's hands clenched into half-fists in front of him. "As if he could _stop_ the explosion with his hands."

The sound of the environmental controls seemed deafening in the seconds before he spoke again. Somewhere beyond the door, a latch clicked, clearly audible. "There was a flash; Blues was gone—so was half of the testing ground. There was fire. The edges of the crater looked like they had been lapped by waves. Like sandstone . Will—Will was at the edge of the crater. His clothes were singed, but there was no lasting damage."

"But Blues was gone. Dead for certain, we thought. He never arrived at Gladstonbury. And now this business with Will; I wonder if there wasn't some connection with the teleport accident and his madness."

Cheever cleared his throat. "So that was Blues we saw?"

Light cleared his throat. "I know for a fact it wasn't Rock. He had a shield. And he looked like hell." His brow wrinkled. "But Blues never had a buster—we didn't develop the schematics for that type until the beginning of the Robot War."

Post opened his mouth to ask a question, but was interrupted by a tone signaling a visitor at the door. Light rose and opened it, to be confronted with the Japanese representative to the United Earth council.

"Darwin!" Light groped for an appropriate pleasantry, but settled on a pragmatic approach. "What are you doing here?"

"Good afternoon to you as well," Vinkus frowned. "Nice to see you after all this time."

"Of course," Light agreed, opening the door wider. "Come in, please. We were just discussing my tragic personal past and my ill-fated robotic progeny."

"Blues?" Vinkus asked. "I knew it. Well I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's the only sort I have right now. I suppose I can append some good news to it—you'll have enough time after this to get drinks together, because as of now, the UE is suspending the trial."

"What?"

"Now the bad news." Vinkus shrugged. "Your presence is requested elsewhere."

Light sat up straighter. "Where?"

"Palma Maximum Security Asylum for the Criminally Insane." Darwin Vinkus rubbed at his balding head. "Our mutual acquaintance Dr. Wily has agreed to play ball, but he wants a sit-down with you first. The UE called an emergency meeting just a few minutes ago, and has decided—with more alacrity than is its wont, I might add—that any information we might gain from Dr. Wily is more important than pursuing this ridiculous show trial."

Thomas Light leaned back and expelled a long breath. "I guess this has been a long time coming," he sighed. "Time to face the music."

_Unknown_

He awoke surrounded by foliage.

His fingers dripped with something dark—probably his own coolant. Slowly, he sat upright and moved his arms experimentally. Nothing seemed broken, although a strange anomalous feeling pervaded both hands: something less than an ache, but more pronounced and localized than simple haptic formication.

He flexed his fingers.

With a sound like rushing water, his hand ballooned out, lost its fingers, and rearranged itself at the molecular level into a large egg shape. The hole twice the size of his thumb in diameter pierced the distal end; on either side, longitudinal lighted displays indicated power.

_A buster?_ None of his memory banks indicated how he had come by it. Collating fragments of data, he was able to summon a low-resolution image of a dim lab cluttered with datacards, electronic components, and a large pod. It triggered an emotional response—one that he quickly dampened. He had learned that the emotional subroutines associated with many sights and sounds would cause periods of memory loss and dangerous readings in his power relay diagnostic filters.

He experimented with different commands to the hand-turned-buster, soon finding the movements that activated its transformation sequence, shot a plasma burst, and switched to an alternate power source that his heads-up display described with only blank placeholder code.

_Take stock_.

Physically, he seemed largely unharmed. His self-maintenance log noted that his auto-repair systems had closed several superficial lacerations to his synthflesh in the past six months, and realigned two moderate full-skeletal displacements in his left brachio-radial assembly. His left leg had been severely damaged—the burn marks indicated a plasma burst—and had still not been fully repaired.

His head throbbed, and he recognized the familiar conflict between his core module and his main power transfer coils. Something was different about it, though. Where before he had felt a constant push by one against the other—each an immovable force—he now felt as if he were simply trying to slip a complicated knot past itself.

Somebody had performed an emergency bypass—an incredibly circuitous, tortuous, and altogether brilliant way for the two systems to coexist by means of a subtle logical lattice. The lattice itself was predicated on some very tenuous matrices. He would have to see about shifting a few variables here and there to try to stabilize it. The more he examined the fix, the more puzzled he grew. It bore a distinct hallmark of genius, and of familiarity with his operating system; at the same time, some of the programming was so filled with dead-ends, switchbacks and recursive loops that it almost seemed the mathematical equivalent of a child learning to speak.

His jacket had been badly abused—he would need to keep it safe from further damage if he could. A brief scan of the surrounding atmosphere revealed it to be extremely humid—not ideal conditions for already damaged leather clothing. His shades—his mask, as far as he was concerned—were only partly broken. He pulled an earpiece straight and slid the sunglasses over his nose, concealing his eyes. Now his face was complete.

The scarf was still clean. He tossed it over his shoulder so that it wouldn't catch on the branches. His lucky charm was still as bright and untarnished as the day he had claimed it as his own.

Whenever that was.

_So: a broken body, a broken mind, and a broken face to show the world. A fine figure I must cut. At least I have a buster, my shield, and the freedom to walk where I will. Broken, but not dead._

"Not so bad," he muttered with a smirk. His vocoders still functioned, even if his voice was hoarse. "Make way for the Broken Man."

He slung his shield over his shoulder, chose a direction, and limped into the jungle.


	6. Chapter 4: Cyclogenesis

"_The most troubling element of the second Irregular Uprising was that the clues were all around us for months, and we still didn't see it coming. In retrospect, the Counter-Hunters' hand is obvious in so many of the events leading up to the revolt that it seems almost negligent for us to have missed them. Let that be a lesson to you—never be so grateful that the storm has passed that you fail to notice the next one brewing on the horizon_."

-except from tactical lecture by Commander Signas

**Chapter Four**

**Cyclogenesis**

Rain pounded the grey sidewalks in silvery waves.

Water squelched between Consuela's toes inside her shoes. She cursed listlessly; these were nice shoes. They had just been delivered two days ago, and she had hoped that their obvious quality would impress her contact. She had spent hours agonizing over the right ensemble to wear—she didn't want too appear too casual, but she also didn't want to stand out at the agreed-upon rendezvous spot. After long deliberation, she had finally chosen a light tan skirt-and-jacket set over a simple white blouse.

And now her new shoes had been marred by the rain.

Consuela gritted her teeth in frustration. _Estúpida__—it's not like it doesn't rain _every_ year at this time!_

No matter. Even soggy shoes failed to dampen her enthusiasm for the task ahead. Today, she would finally meet with the man who could set her vengeance in motion. Today, the _reconquista_ of her fate—of her _life_—would truly begin. Today, the Human Supremacy League could begin its long climb back from the brink of oblivion and into its rightful place at the head of the global political order.

Today, everything would change.

She had tried imagining how the deed would be done. Would the League send an elite strike force to storm the asylum, and break into Wily's cube? Consuela found that she wasn't terribly upset in envisioning some collateral damage in the imaginary attack; perhaps a stray bullet or laser beam might find one of those condescending security guards. And then, the look on Wily's face—the terror she had felt during the _revolucion_ would be mirrored and amplified a hundred times in him.

Maybe she would simply slip something into his food—a nanochip of some sort—and the League would use it to track him and teleport him away, where he would be interrogated and tortured for information. Consuela would be a hero, uncovering the secret sleeper cells that loomed an omnipresent dread, while Dr. Delgato had not even managed to unravel the mystery of the madman's patterned toys!

Something shiny heaved out of the rain towards her. Consuela jerked away, her hands reflexively shielding her face, and her shoulders hunching to make her a smaller target. It took her a handful of heartbeats for the knot in her heart to loosen; she lowered her hands and glared at the small robot that had startled her.

A Japanese model by the look of it: foreign pictographs twisted in a complex knotwork around a central Roman "S" on its identifying logo. Spindly legs held a metal circular orb twice the size of a grapefruit at waist level, equipped with a tiny speakerphone "mouth" and three eyes in a triangular pattern. It swayed slowly in the rain, adjusting to tiny changes in its balance.

Consuela's heart thudded, and she waved the thing away.

Soulless eyes stared at her—patient, unyielding clusters of green micro-LEDs. "Would you like to try our new mouthwash?" it asked with preprogrammed cheeriness.

Her teeth had bared in an unintentional rictus; Consuela forced herself to be calm. Before the revolts, she had thought nothing of the mechanized swarm that seethed under the feet of its human masters. The robots that propped up a society still recovering from its own near-annihilation had escaped the speech therapist's notice largely unseen. Even after the troubles, she had done her best to ignore them—it wasn't _their_ fault their harmless programming had been subverted. Still, a worm of dread gnawed at her heart every time the sound of metallic feet or hydraulic servos approached.

Today, she let her fearful grimace slide into a sneer.

"Do not speak to me, puppet," she snapped. Placing one large foot on the faceplate of the offending automaton, she pushed. It filled her heart with a cool satisfaction to see it kicking its legs helplessly—an overturned tortoise, waiting to die.

She marched the rest of the way to her destination without a thought for the robot, her shoulders squared.

In sunnier seasons, the restaurant was known for its charming patio from which guests could just barely see the ocean through the hilly, winding streets. Even in inclement weather, the patio saw occasional use; an expensive aquastatic field extended from the building proper in a quarter-globe, shielding guests from rain and wind without blocking the view.

Today, a single man sat at an old-fashioned ironwork table and sipped a glass of something dark, ankles crossed. At first, Consuela felt sure he was staring at her; as she approached, it became clear that his gaze was fixed behind her, on the tumultuous storm-driven sea. She followed his gaze as a lone plane dipped beneath the clouds in the distance, but rapidly returned her attention to the matter at hand.

A human waiter dressed in a burgundy and cream uniform escorted Consuela to the man's table and seated her. A moment passed in uncomfortable silence. The man opposite her wore an unassuming but well-cut charcoal-grey double-breasted suit. His black hair swept back from high temples, adorned with gold-rimmed glasses. He steepled his fingers and breathed in slowly, eyes fixed on the sea.

_What is he waiting for?_

The moments ticked by, and Consuela grew increasingly aware of moisture underneath her armpits. Was this even the right man? She had made sure of the location—perhaps she had mistaken the day of the meeting.

_The password! __Estúpida!_ She swallowed her chagrin and cleared her throat.

"What a piece of work is a man," she said, savoring the sound of the words on her tongue. Inarco Celenio's translation had always been her favorite.

Her silent companion abruptly came to life, leaning forward. "In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!" He barely had any accent when speaking Spanish—a light Nordestino trill perhaps—but had she not been so attuned to patterns of speech, she might never have guessed his Brazilian origins.

"Man delights not me," she finished her half of the code.

"Over all of Spain, the sky is clear," he answered, with a twist of his lips. "Good afternoon, Miss Alvarez."

"Good afternoon, Mister Iago," she replied. She groped for an appropriate pleasantry. "Was your trip here comfortable?"

He shrugged and lifted the wineglass from the table. "A disappointment of human slavery—mindless sheep following their unwitting mechanical masters' direction, thinking themselves the lords. I cannot abide the weakness of those who would be trampled underneath the feet of their oppressors." A sip. "But that is why you have come to me today, is it not? Because you and I are not sheep, Miss Alvarez. You and I are tired of living in fear."

"_Yes_," she replied, more vehemently than she had meant to. "So very tired."

"My brother saw that revolution was the only path to freedom," he said. "He took it upon himself to lift the torch of liberty first—to join the League and to fight for all it meant." His expression soured. "It was not until recent events that I myself saw the necessity for change. I understand that you also lost family in the Robot War."

"_Sí_. My parents both." A hard lump clogged her throat in its accustomed place.

"And I my brother," he said. "So here sits Henrique, his heart filled with remorse and the need for justice. What say you, Miss Alvarez?"

"Consuela," she insisted. "Justice is sorely needed, Mr. Iago. I will do my part."

"For humanity," Iago smiled mirthlessly, lifting his glass. He drained the rest of it in a single gulp. Pouring himself another glass, he sighed. "I feel our partnership should start honestly, Consuela. The League is not in a position of strength. Our defeat in Chile has left us stripped of resources, manpower, and capital. We are not a popular movement in the eyes of the sheep. And a new threat has risen—our head of operations in Germany was recently abducted and tortured to the point of death by a group of fanatics calling themselves the Sons of Light."

Consuela accepted the proffered wine bottle and poured herself a glass as well. She held Dr. Thomas Light almost as culpable as Dr. Wily for the Robot War. "The world needs our help all the more, then."

"You speak truly." Iago rested his chin on a single finger, gazing again at the tempestuous waves in the distance. "If only there was a way to catch both villains in a single snare."

Consuela nearly choked on her wine. _Of course!_

"I think I may have a way," she said. Henrique Iago's expression of approval warmed her soul.

She felt herself growing prouder and prouder as she outlined her plan, and the new leader of the Human Supremacy League nodded thoughtfully at each stage. By the time her glass was empty, she had grown bold.

"You make me believe that it will work," Iago said at last. "Can I leave this to you, Miss Alvarez?"

Consuela smiled, her heart pounding as fiercely as the storm-frenzied surf. "Trust me with this, sir. By the end of the week, the League will have its vengeance, and the Sons of Light will be hunted men."

_Houston, United States_

Rock blinked, the lambent haze of teleportation receding from his field of vision.

He stood outside on hard asphalt, marked with diagonal yellow stripes. A chain-link fence closed off the area in which he stood, making a square one hundred feet across. Pathways had been marked along the ground in chalk of all colors. At the southern end of the enclosure, a wide gate hung open. A temporary storage unit had been converted into an office, from which a stout man crowned with thinning black hair now emerged.

The teleport zone in which he and Roll had landed lay directly beside a large storage facility; many of the wares on display at the trade show would be kept there, and had been teleported ahead of time. Still an expensive means of transport, matter teleportation was generally reserved for cargo needing expedition in its shipping. By the expression on the receiving director's face as he approached, he had been expecting shipping crates, not androids.

"J-Jesus, y'all! Y'can't just teleport in here; ain't you heard what teleport does to human brains?" The man's skin lost color even as the android siblings watched. Both lunged to assist him into a sitting position as he keyed up an emergency code on his nanophone implant.

"Relax, sir," Rock smiled. "We're androids. Part of the LighTech contingent. DLN 001 and 002 respectively."

"Bull," the man spat. "No robots I've ever seen look so much like regular folk 'cept maybe . . . where'd you say you were from again?"

Roll helped the man to stand. "Japan. We're from LighTech, here to survey the show. Is there anything we can do for you, sir? You look unwell."

The man swiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "LighTech? That shipment got here yesterday!" Recognition spilled over his features. "Holy shit! Yer Megaman!"

Rock smiled—a perfect copy of a human grin. "Please call me Rock. I'm finished with that part of my life now."

"Sure, sure. Lemme just scan you two in . . ." Muttering nervously, the man withdrew a small coin-sized object from his belt and waved it towards the android twins. After a moment, a look of consternation crossed his face. "Well, shoot. That ain't never happened before. Ya got a problem with your security transceivers or somethin'?"

Rock glanced at Roll, who shrugged. "We don't have any," he answered. "We're not production models, sir. There's only one of each of us." He hoped that the hitch in his voice wasn't noticeable to anybody but Roll.

_Only one of each . . . except for the empty doll back home_. It didn't trouble him greatly—nothing could today. He was _alive_. After all the violence, after all the torture and uncertainty, it was over. He would never have to be Rockman again. His smile was genuine as the receiving director scratched his head.

"Well damn," the director grunted. "Don't rightly know how ta check ya in, if ya don't have a transceiver. How're we supposed to track ya if ya get stolen?"

Roll shrugged. "We're almost fully autonomous, mister . . ."

"Miller. Keith Miller. Pleased to meechya." He held out a sweaty hand.

"Mister Miller, we don't need any supervision, if that's your concern. We're here on our own time, not company time." Roll made a point of modulating her tone pleasantly while speaking.

"Yer own time?" The words came out of his mouth as if unfamiliar. "Yer owner know yer here?"

Roll shivered again—barely perceptible even to Rock. He turned a worried glance towards her, but she merely smiled perfectly and said. "Yes. Dr. Light knows we're here. He gave me instructions to come in his absence since he is currently unable to attend."

_That_ made sense to the man. He blew a sigh of relief and said, "Okay, just wait here fer a second—I'm gonna get a temporary marker for you two as telepresence 'bots." He walked quickly towards a nearby desk humming something repetitive and unidentifiable.

"Roll," Rock hissed, making sure to keep his voice at a nearly subsonic register. "What was _that_? Are you okay?"

"What was what?"

"You shuddered. I've seen it twice now. That's not a normal kinetic subroutine." He moved a bit closer. "Are you experiencing problems with your gyroscopic compensatory mechanism?"

Roll shook her head. "No, it's just . . .nothing."

Rock frowned. "_Nothing _doesn't look like that. You're hiding something from me."

"Then I must think it's important for you not to know," Roll snapped. "Can we just drop it? I'm operating within normal parameters in every field of significance. This is—" she seemed to struggle for the right word. "Personal."

"What's with you?" Rock demanded, folding his arms. "Evasiveness, aberrant behavior, _crying_ . . . there's something wrong, Roll."

"_Drop it_!" It was nearly a shriek. As the echo faded, Roll wrung her hands and gritted her teeth. Rock made a show of looking elsewhere, and found himself staring back at Keith Miller; the man was agape.

"You sure yer robots?" he asked uncertainly. "This isn't a prank? 'Cause you two argue like an old married couple."

"We're _siblings_," the androids answered in unison.

"A'ight," Miller held his hands up in placation. "Here are yer temporary markers." He handed each of the two a small decal with flexible circuitry printed on the back. The front was emblazoned with the LighTech logo: a large L contained almost entirely within a circle.

"Thank you," Rock said with a smile. He placed the decal on the back of his hand. Turning to his sister, he made a mock half-bow, gesturing to the multistory conference center. "Shall we?"

"Oh, let's do," Roll replied, her speech perfectly mimicking stereotypical aristocratic elocution. "I hope we don't cause a stir by arriving late; imagine the fuss!"

"Oh, _bother _the fuss," Rock answered.

The pair linked arms and strolled towards the large building. The receiving director shook his head slowly. "Damn human if y'ask me," Rock heard him mutter.

"All right," Rock said quietly as they approached the hall. "I won't push you on it any more today; but if you start to feel that this . . . _personal_ matter in any way impedes the function of important processes—or even ancillary—"

"Fine," Roll said. Her tone was somewhat less sharp now. "I'll let you know and we'll head back home."

Rock nodded, satisfied for the moment. Ahead, the massive building loomed; the new World Megacenter comprised several stories of steel, glass and concrete. Though designed by human architects, its construction had been entirely automated. It had taken less than a month to raise the whole building; decoration by human beings had taken as long as the actual construction. As the inaugural event to be held in the new center, this trade show had drawn many more visitors than otherwise would have been normal.

"Welcome to the Robotics Trade Show," a pleasantly neutral voice trilled as Rock and Roll entered through one of several dozen pairs of glass doors that encircled the ground level of the round building. The scanner registered their decals. "The opening remarks shall commence in five minutes in the Great Hall. LighTech telepresence units have a reserved space. Please follow the lighted path."

The building transmitted directions to the twins; Rock's heads-up display now included a glowing path extending along the floor down the main hallway and through a pair of double doors inside. Roll grunted beside him. "Quite accommodating."

As they walked towards the Great Hall, servbots hailed them with the common subsonic or binary code reserved for acknowledgement of robot masters by lesser constructs. Most humans—mistaking them for human as well, either ignored them or waved. One or two did a double take upon seeing Rock and turned towards their respective parties with an exciting expression. Rock made a point of replying to the robots with a "status optimal message," to the humans with a nod, and to the recognition with a determined pretense of ignorance. Roll smiled and waved once or twice, but seemed mostly absorbed in her own thoughts.

"Welcome, LighTech telepresence," the same voice said as they entered the large doors to the Great Hall. "Your appointed viewing space is indicated on your visual display. Please enjoy the wireless power-regeneration pads free of charge today—courtesy of the X Foundation."

Roll tilted her head slightly at that. Rock raised an eyebrow as they moved towards their assigned space.

"Nothing, really," Roll replied to Rock's unvoiced question. "Just that . . . well, I'd like to sit in the regular audience seats. We haven't been _ordered_ by a human to sit with the other robots, after all."

Rock shrugged. "Sure." They changed their direction, ignoring squawks of electronic alarm keyed to their own unique aural frequencies. As they sat in a pair of empty seats near the back—the rest of the auditorium had already filled with press, tradesmen and roboticists—the automated voice reminded them on their own unique aural frequencies that they were in violation of human space. Rock frowned and peeled the circuit-printed decal from the back of his hand. The voice went dead. A moment later, Roll did the same.

The twins waited in silence for the opening remarks to begin. Rock sat back and shut down several nonessential ancillary processes. Today, for the first time in a long time, he felt as if an invisible fog that had hovered about him during the Robot War had finally cleared.

"Nice view," he remarked, simply because it felt good to make a carefree observation devoid of utility.

Roll nodded, her own brow stormy. "It is. Let's see what the competition has to offer this year."

The lights dimmed, and the trade show began.

_Somewhere over Europe_

Dr. Light yawned and pushed a grimy feeling out of his eyes with the back of his fists. His heart still beat a bit faster than he would have liked; he was not looking forward to this meeting. At first, he had intended to visit Dr. Wily in prison straight away, but he had been rebuffed on the grounds of the German roboticist's psychological and mental instability. That provided an easy justification for delaying the meeting; from there, the excuses piled up.

He had hidden from it for half a year, submerging himself in his work, laboring to remotely play the part of Rockman through an empty drone for a world whose morale hung by a thread. Week after week, month after month, he had delayed the inevitable, forestalling it with protests to himself that he was busy, that Will's condition was too unstable, that his robotic family needed him. Slowly but inexorably, he had relegated the unpleasant possibility of a visit with his broken friend-turned-nemesis to the realm of "worry about it later," for half a dozen months.

And now, suddenly, it was "later."

Thomas Light stretched in the airplane seat, feeling a multitude of minor pops and snaps as his aging body complained. He had never liked confrontation; while he preferred to think of himself as a pacifist, sometimes the word _coward_ skirted the edge of his thoughts in a voice disturbingly like Will's.

In truth, he _was _afraid. Somehow, by avoiding this confrontation, it had become less real to him. There was a part of the robotics genius able to convince itself that the Robot War had never taken place—that Wily was merely on sabbatical in Germany again. The fading sunlight filtering through the plan windows was not nearly as harsh as the actuality he now faced.

His best friend, his colleague in robotics, and his partner had lost his mind and committed atrocities that beggared rhetoric. He could never be the same man to Thomas Light or the rest of the world, no matter what therapy he had undergone. And now he must perforce face the demon his friend had become in order to salvage what little sanity might remain.

The jet shuddered, and Light gripped the arm of his seat reflexively. Of course, the UE had elected to fly him to Palma in an expensive supersonic jet, with the result that the checkout of the craft and boarding had taken longer than the twenty minute duration of the flight itself. His nap had been interrupted by the shaking of the jet as it entered its landing cycle.

The sunlight vanished under a shroud of mist and rain as the plane descended through the clouds that veiled Palma. Light glanced out the windows at the storm-tossed sea pounding against the jagged coastline. As he watched, a single shaft of sunlight pierced the smothering murk, glittering briefly against the violent waters. Brief as lightning, it was gone. As if it had never been.

_Still. Even amidst the storm, there is Light._

His seat bucked gently beneath him as the plane touched down.

Cheever had wanted to come; the cheerful, odiferous Brit had assailed Light with a battery of "see here" and "now, look." The LighTech special liaison had been most persistent but Light had firmly refused. Terrible as this would be, he had no wish to share the burden with another, or have a witness to his discomfort—or Will's madness.

The inertial dampeners produced a humming chorus. "Touchdown complete," the plane announced. Light unbuckled, stood, and worked the kinks out. A lightheaded feeling swept over him as the gravity of the situation finally settled. He was here, in Palma. It was real, now.

The hatch opened and a set of stairs matched to his stride length assembled themselves from the top down. In spite of the situation, Light smiled appreciatively. _That would be Yamusho's swarm robotics at work. Not bad._

Taking a deep breath, he stepped out of the jet and into the rain.

_Tokyo, Japan_

The holodisplay above Yoshi Inafune's desk was a giant question mark.

His dark brows angled; that symbol was reserved only for phone numbers his sophisticated identification software couldn't trace. He had only seen a question mark three times above his desk while the harmonious chimes he had chosen for his call alert jingled.

The first time had been four years ago; an influential yakuza enforcer had taken it into his mind to try to muscle through the multilayered digital security protocols surrounding Inafune's internal corporate communications network. The criminal had taken just a hair too much time in delivering his message, and in attempting to intimidate Inafune with theatrics. Inafune had, by that time, initiated a covert trace. The man had been arrested within the hour. Inside a month, he had been sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor for other crimes he had also committed.

Inafune had attended both the trial and the sentencing.

The second time the question mark had appeared, the tycoon had been expecting a call from one of his chief financial advisors. The man had gone missing after lunch. Somewhere between the restaurant and the subway station—in a tiny three-foot wide zone where security cameras did not overlap—Inafune's advisor had inexplicably vanished. Naturally, Inafune waited for the ransom demand.

When it came, his advisor had been incoherent; his words were a meaningless jumble. Yoshi had only recognized the man's voice by the way he pronounced certain words; his strong Hokkaido accent had still been present. The kidnappers spoke only once, demanding that Inafune meet them alone in front of an old audio electronics store in Akihabara.

Inafune had stood in front of the store for four fours, his Marlin raygun in a concealed holster. Nobody had once approached him, and his financial advisor had never been seen or heard from again. Yoshi Inafune made contributions through the X Foundation to ensure that the man's family did not suffer financially.

That was almost two years ago now.

The third time had been four months ago, when Dr. Light had called him personally to discuss Inafune's request to have Rockman appear for the unveiling of the Robot War Memorial Wing of the museum. Inafune smiled at that; if anybody in the legitimate business world would have a communications system that could circumvent his security filters, it would be Dr. Thomas Light.

Now the question mark hovered enigmatically above his desk, signaling another important conversation. Inafune smoothed his suit jacket, breathed deeply in and out twice, and shut his eyes. When they opened again, he was ready.

His fingertips waved over the activation sensor in his desk, and the question mark dissolved into a million photons, rearranging themselves into the head and chest of a man about Inafune's own age. Pale in a way troglodytic fish might envy, the man's emerald-glittering eyes and swept-back blond hair made for a striking image. He wore a simple but well-tailored suit jacket and a green tie.

Inafune's face lit in recognition.

"Lotto! This is unexpected, my friend. How have you been?"

The man on the other end made a mock bow. "I've been well. You are looking good, Shogun."

Inafune smirked. "Lotto" and "Shogun" had been college nicknames nearly two decades ago when the pair had been undergraduates studying economics and finance at the University of Leipzig. Inafune's decisive, ambitious mannerisms had earned him the _de facto_ role of leader amongst the small group of Japanese students at the University, as well as the epithet of "Shogun."

His friend was one of a similar number of Swedish students. The pale young man's tendency towards fiery rhetoric had earned him early recognition in student government—but not nearly as much as the passionate blush that rose to his cheeks while delivering said proclamations. The German students had nicknamed him "Rotwange"—_Rosy Cheeks_. Inafune, his pronunciation of "r" and "l" still slurred at the time, had rendered it "Lotto-vangay," eventually shortening to "Lotto."

By any name, however, 'Rosy Cheek' Andersson had not contacted his old college friend for many years.

"To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?" Inafune asked, sitting back in his chair.

Lotto raised an eyebrow. "I've been working on something. A business enterprise, you might say, although it's as much a public outreach program as a business, truth be told." He smiled. "I've followed some of your investments over the years; you seem to have retained a similar passion for mixing business and philanthropy."

"Your words are too kind." Inafune dismissed the compliment with a wave.

"Nonsense. Ah, but I forget that this is the Japanese way of saying, 'Of course, you are right, my friend.'" Lotto fiddled with something below camera range. "Well, we shall proceed as if you had said so, in any case. I visited your Robot Museum last month, you know."

"Did you? Lotto, you should have called me earlier. I would have given you the grand tour—there are some special pieces I reserve for such occasions." He made a show of looking disappointed, since Westerners often needed a facial cue to interpret such things. "It is too bad that we missed this opportunity."

"Truly, I was on a tight schedule," Andersson explained. "It would not have done to inconvenience you. However, it reminded me that you have an interest in robotics and history as well—both of which are also key to my new enterprise."

Inafune caught himself halfway between a smile and a frown, his mouth frozen in an unlikely twist. "Such a thing will either run my Robot Museum out of business, or be the best thing that could happen to it. Please speak further, my friend."

"It is not the public knowledge yet," Andersson replied. "In fact, I have been working to keep it under wraps. But soon, everybody will know of it. I simply wanted to offer you an opportunity to join me in this." He leaned forward, and even through holovid, Yoshi could see that his cheeks had grown pink with excitement. "We will change the world, Shogun. We can lead the way to the future that the Second Rainbow worked so hard for. A _better_ future."

No stranger to enthusiastic rhetoric, Inafune still felt his own pulse begin to speed up. "This sounds wonderful," he answered. "Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner some night?"

Lotto shrugged. "What do you do tonight?"

Of course, Inafune's docket was full. He allowed himself a carefree smile. "Nothing at all, my friend. Name the place, and I shall fly to meet you."

"Houston is hosting the Robotics Trade Show in its new World Megacenter," Andersson said. "I think it would be a fitting place to meet."

Inafune's smile grew wider. "Excellent. I shall meet you there in six hours. By then, dinner will be most welcome."

"I look forward to it." Christer Andersson's face faded as the holovid connection was cut. Inafune stood and walked briskly to the door, tapping his nanophone implant.

"_Inafune-sama,_" the robot on the other end answered. "How may I serve you today?"

"Number Five," he replied, recognizing the speech pattern of his robotic travel agent. "Prepare a jet." He paused, deliberating. "The _Zorome_. And see to it that my work docket is rescheduled or rearranged for telepresence today."

"Of course, sir."

Inafune strode with a spring in his step to the elevator, whistling.

_Geneva, Switzerland_

Troy Edward Mears seethed.

Across the table, the horrid man who had introduced himself as Peter Cheever munched on a donut and eyed the decorated general with genuine interest. Crumbs scattered over the front of his tweed suit, and he absently batted at a small swarm of airborne servbots with his empty hand. After a moment, he swallowed and fixed Mears with a penetrating gaze that belied his slovenly appearance.

"All right, old boy. What's your game, then?"

Mears had expected several minutes' worth of meaningless pleasantries. It was such a direct demand that the general found himself momentarily at a loss for words. Only momentarily, though. He squared his shoulders.

"My 'game' is national security, Mister Cheever. American citizens suffered an appalling number of casualties in the Robot War, both in the initial strike and in the occupation of New Denver." He made sure to return Cheever's gaze with interest. "We were unprepared; the security bots and military bots we had were unequal to the task of defense against such a global threat."

_That_ was an understatement. Troy had commanded the several battalions tasked with resistance in the western United States. The army had several hundred thousand warbots in its possession, thanks to contracts with both U.S. Robotics and Sennet. They had remained inactive during the first of Wily's strikes. However, as soon as they were activated to fight alongside human soldiers, they turned on their masters, multiplying the slaughter exponentially.

Recovering from such a snafu had been uphill work, to be sure, but bit by bit, the combined might of the U.S. military had quelled all but the most concentrated spots of mechanized insurrection. Thousands had died—and that was only counting the military casualties. Mears had heard that civilian casualties numbered nearly a quarter of a million.

_And the dead might have been even more numerous, had Light's pet soldier bot not destroyed Fireman_. Mears had never forgotten that, or the way the robot had slipped from between his fingers on the return trip from Skull Castle. Within a week of Wily's capture, Mears had determined that what the army needed against the eventuality of another such war was a corps of several thousand Rockmen—each imbued with the combat prowess and resistance to malignant reprogramming that had made the original such an effective tool against the machinations of the now-imprisoned megalomaniac. And so he had resurrected the Robosoldier Program of decades past and rechristened it the Advanced Robosoldier Program.

The trial had provided a perfect opportunity for him to wrest the information he needed from LighTech; and his surprise evidence had seemed a flawless ace in the hole.

_Strike fast, strike hard, strike repeatedly_. Mears had long ago learned that the aphorism applied to more than just combat tactics. He had Light and his rabble of limp-wristed stockholders on the run with his plan. The judge had surely been ready to make a statement in Mears' favor—or at least to demand a rebuttal from the LighTech contingent.

A rebuttal, Mears was sure, that the aged roboticist was in no position to make.

And now _this_.

Before his victory could be assured, Light had been whisked away to play therapist for the monster responsible for the deaths of countless American soldiers and citizens, leaving Mears in the company of the odious special liaison in front of him.

"National security," the fat man snorted. "And you think that wheedling the technical specifications of the Rockman proprietary format into your government's hands will get you that? The world still remembers the Kewbee massacres that kicked off the War, General. And it hasn't forgotten that the United States was responsible for that."

Mears suppressed an angry expression. Forcing a mild tone, he replied, "That is history, Mr. Cheever. The men responsible for the decisions that led to that tragedy are either deceased or imprisoned."

"And well done," Cheever smiled. He titled his head pensively. "Although if memory serves, former Vice President Daniel Grevis was an early sponsor of yours, wasn't he?"

The general ground his teeth silently. "_My_ only concern is fielding a military force strong enough to stand against the threat of possible future robot insurrections." He fixed his opponent with a steady glare. "And make no mistake, Mr. Cheever. If your company has its way, the world will see another Robot War, regardless of Dr. Wily's location."

Cheever raised an eyebrow and licked the glaze from his fingertips. "Come, now. _Our _way? Androbot and laboroid production has steadily increased across the board; LighTech accounts for less than half of those robots. Why, for heaven's sake, your own contract with U.S. Robotics is responsible for the production of over a quarter of a million 'Shotman' units, isn't it? Besides, even in the last six months, technology has dramatically improved to minimize the chances of repeating such an unpleasant incident."

"_Minimize_," Mears shot back. "Any good tactician knows that even a one percent chance is _still_ a chance."

"There is a greater likelihood of another world-killer asteroid drifting into Earth orbit than of another Robot War," Cheever stated confidently. "Especially with one of the only men in the world with the technical knowledge to perpetrate such an act safely under lock and key."

"Waiting for a threat to materialize _before_ preparing for it is bad national security policy," Mears answered. "Even if I were to accept the idea that a second Robot War is a statistically minimal possibility—which I do not—it would still be a sound idea to prepare."

"Fair enough." The smiling Brit held his hands palms-up. "What makes you think that your army of Rockmen won't turn on you the way the defense 'bots in the first Robot War did? Don't you agree that a hundred rogue Rockmen would be infinitely worse than what you had to deal with before?"

_We're just firing blanks at this point_. Mears stood. "Well, Mr. Cheever, I can see that neither of us is going to convince the other. We'll simply have to let the judge make his decision."

"Indeed," the liaison agreed cheerfully, snatching a second donut from the plate in front of him. "Lovely speaking with you, General. Do give my best to your countrymen."

Mears left the room, his massive frame filling the doorway. As he crossed the threshold, his nanophone implant emitted a series of beeps signaling a priority transmission. Tapping his ear to activate secure transfer mode, he said, "Go ahead."

"Sir, we have some new intel we thought you might want to see," the voice on the other end said. "One of our corporate espionage contacts dug up some footage from a security feed in New Shirewick dated to six months ago."

"And?"

The voice paused. "We'll forward you the holofeed, sir."

Mears removed a datapad from his pocket and waved his hand over it in the required pattern. The screen sprang to life, emitting a holographic display. On one side of the field stood an Orpheus model—probably the threat designated Iceman by the location. On the other side . . .

Mears allowed himself a rare, wolfish grin. "Triple check the time-stamp on the feed," he ordered. "And well done. I'll forward a commendation to your department for this."

He barely heard the voice on the other end stammer thanks.

_There's no way they can get around this. LighTech will be stuck in such a shitstorm that they'll give us anything we want_.

_Houston, United States_

Rock smiled appreciatively at the presentation.

At the center of the stage, Shirow Cybernetics' head of PR—Yuji Takayama—shook hands with a tall humanoid robot. Streamlined and dotted with lights here and there, the machine glanced back and forth, waving to cameras with its free hand. Its photoreceptors blinked behind a tough shatter-resistant visor as it surveyed the crowd.

"Fuujin here is the prototype of a new generation of laboroids that will help in the development of super-sonic personal transportation." Takayama gestured grandly, releasing the robot's hand. "Not only does he serve in his humanoid capacity to aid in research and human interaction . . ."

Free of the PR manager's grasp, the robot collapsed piecemeal from a gleaming, sleek humanoid into a low-slung silver car sized for a single passenger. The face of the robot now perched atop the hood, still protected by its large visor. Takayama continued. "It can also transform itself through our proprietary modular functional technology into a vehicle capable of ground speeds over 640 kilometers per hour."

A low murmur buzzed through the audience. Rock raised an eyebrow.

"Of course, that's not all," the man on stage smiled. Behind and around him, various holodisplays materialized, picturing the Fuujin robot running on two legs. Roll's sound of astonishment beside him mirrored Rock's feelings. Indicators displayed below the film of the running machine indicated speeds of 320 kilometers per hour. "Utilizing our lightning-fast kinetics core, Fuujin can outrun conventional land vehicles on two legs alone!"

A green light gleamed at the stage's edge, indicating permission for questions from the audience. Rock sat back and glanced at his sister. "Amazing, isn't it?"

Roll nodded. "Can you imagine being so fast?"

Rock frowned.

"What?" Roll's eyebrows twisted into a puzzled expression. "Is there something wrong with speed?"

"It's not that," Rock answered. Keeping his voice low enough that the man sitting on his other side couldn't hear, he said, "I just . . . I guess I've gotten into the habit of looking at other robots as potential opponents. I found myself building subroutines for how to avoid and combat something so quick. I don't like that my autonomic processes immediately jumped to those calculations."

"You've been through a lot," Roll's sympathy didn't cut nearly as deep as Rock had expected. "Now that you're fully functional again, it may take some time for your neural net to revert to a more peaceful frame of mind."

On stage, Fuujin revved its motor dramatically, before vaulting end over end, transfiguring itself back into humanoid form before landing. The audience applauded enthusiastically, and several reporters or their telepresence 'bots spoke over one another in their attempts to have their own questions answered first.

Roll made a show of stretching. It had been ten minutes since she had last done so, and a human being might have acquired muscle stiffness in the elapsed time—robots, after all, were meant to sit in their own designated area. Rock suspected the last thing she wanted was to be identified as an android and ordered back to the LighTech telepresence reserved seats. "We should stick around for the LighTech opening statements. Then I'd like to check out the security robots demonstrations from Sennet and Omnitech."

The man next to Rock leaned towards him and added, "I wouldn't miss the LighTech show either. I hear they've got something really revolutionary on tap."

"No kidding," Rock replied. He turned and raised an eyebrow at Roll.

She grinned mischievously. "Well, you knew there were bound to be a few surprises after you woke up."

"Let's have another hand for Shirow Cybernetics and Fuujin the turbo-bot!" The audience politely acceded to the automated request as Yuji Takayama and the gleaming transforming robot walked from the stage, waving. Rock adjusted his broadband receiver to scan for any signs of automated chatter regarding his presence in the human seats. Detecting nothing, he sat back and turned to the man beside him. A pale sports coat did little to conceal the physique of a natural athlete. Wavy blond hair topped a tanned face set with sparkling brown eyes.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name, sir," Rock said.

The man reached out a strong hand. "Hoffer. Hansel Hoffer." His vowels bore the stamp of a New England upbringing.

Rock reached out his own hand and nearly froze. _Rockman isn't supposed to be sitting here. What do I tell him?_ His mind raced. After a delay lasting less than a fraction of a second, he answered, "Rocky."

Hoffer grinned. "Like the boxer in the old movies, eh? Do you box?"

Rock shook his head. "I'm a lab assistant at the Tokyo LighTech offices. Yourself?"

"Oh, yeah. I study boxing, jujitsu—both Brazilian and traditional, mind you—taekwondo, American catch-wrestling and some fencing." The man puffed out his chest noticeably. "I provided the model for a lot of the kinesthetic subroutines that the new security 'bots from Sennet use, you know."

"That's pretty impressive," Roll observed across Rock. Rock leaned backwards slightly so that she could be seen more clearly. "I hear that Yamusho has been doing some pretty intense work with martial arts training 'droids recently. Have you ever spoken with them?"

Something mischievous rippled across the blond man's features, and he smiled enigmatically.

"Oh ho." Roll smirked. "Well, keep your secrets, then. It's a small field in which we work. I'm sure we'll be seeing more of one another."

"You work for LighTech, too?" The martial artist eyed Roll frankly.

"Sure do," she answered. "Rocky here works in applied hardware and I work in the intelligence and software division."

Hoffer tilted his head. "You mean _artificial_ intelligence, right?"

Roll stiffened.

"I'm sorry, have I said something wrong?" Hoffer spread his hands. "I'm not much of a diplomat, I'm afraid. I only came here to do some demonstrations with the 'bots and to see what's new in the world of tech."

Roll shook her head. "Not at all."

The lights dimmed again in preparation for the LighTech presentation. Hansel Hoffer reached out a hand. "I can tell I said something dumb. Look, let me buy you dinner to make up for it, okay?"

"Mr. Hoffer, that really won't be—"

"Hans," he interjected. "My friends call me Hans. And your name, miss?"

"Sulla." Roll replied. "Helena Sulla. And truly Mr.—Hans, you don't need to buy me dinner. Trust me when I tell you that it would be a waste of time."

"Aw, hell." Hoffer looked crestfallen. "Are you two together? I didn't see a ring, so I just thought . . ."

"No, no," Rock said quickly. "She's my sister."

Hoffer nodded. "Yeah, I guess the resemblance is pretty obvious now that you mention it." He sat back. "Half-siblings?"

"How did you guess?" Roll asked. Rock restrained a frown. This charade had already dragged on too long—at this rate, they'd soon be caught in a lie and outed as androids. What was Roll playing at?

Hans' crumpled expression turned sly. "Well, even though your facial features are similar, you have obvious differences. Rocky's hair is black, and yours is blond. His eyes are a different shade of blue than yours—and yours have that pretty ring around the iris."

Was Roll _blushing_? Rock fought down panic. This was getting out of control.

"Maybe I just dyed my hair," Roll said.

"Nah, you don't have the coloring for that," Hoffer protested. "If you got your hair changed, you went in for a full resequencing job—and I don't think software engineers make that much money, even at LighTech."

"He's got you there, sis," Rock said, his tone falsely bright—calculated to catch Roll's attention. It worked; she jerked her head towards him, brow furrowed.

Unable to speak aloud, he sent a quick narrow-band message her way, hoping it was brief enough to avoid the detection of the scanning net set over the building for security purposes. _Abort operation._

Roll turned back towards Hans. "I'll be back in a moment. I have to . . . use the facilities. Please excuse me."

The man caught her hand as she rose, lurching across Rock. "Not so fast, missy. This isn't my first ballgame—I know that when a woman excuses herself during an awkward conversation to go to the restroom, it means she isn't coming back. I'm not letting you go until you promise to have dinner with me."

Roll looked at Rock with pleading eyes.

Rock cleared his throat—or rather, made a noise he had observed when humans did so, not having an oropharynx or biological secretions necessitating such an act himself. "We were heading back to Japan tonight. It's nothing personal."

"Already? The show's just started!" Hoffer raised a suspicious eyebrow. "Fine, fine. I can tell when I've struck out. I'll leave you alone on one condition. At least let me buy you a drink after the presentations by way of apology." He held up a forestalling finger. "No ifs, ands or buts. That's an order."

_Shit_. That_ will make this more complicated._ Rock found his autonomic emotive responses had triggered a reflexive action—the fingers of his left hand pinched the bridge of his nose, as he had seen Dr. Wily do so often in frustration.

Roll sagged. "All right. Now let me go." Hansel Hoffer acquiesced, and Roll pardoned herself as she stepped across the legs of the other people in the row. Rock sighed and forced a sardonic smile as the martial artist gave him a friendly mock-punch.

"Women, eh? Am I right?"

Rock rolled his eyes. "I cannot tell."

_Palma, Spain_

The eight shadows had arrayed themselves in a circle.

Or perhaps, Wily thought, _he _had placed them so. He could not fully recall. He had not bothered naming them, any more than he would have named a wrench or a logic gate testing probe. As with his previous instruments of instruction, he left the designations up to the shadows, sure that their choices would be straightforward and utilitarian.

Of course, the shadows didn't move. At least, he _thought_ they didn't. Every so often, while addressing the shadows, he would catch a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye where one of the eight hovered at the limit of his peripheral vision. However, when he turned to take the shadow to task for insolence, it invariably stood deathly still. Dr. Wily had long since chosen to ignore such childish antics.

"So." He continued, indicating the shadow in front of him, "_You_ shall coordinate. Do I make myself clear? Without your efforts, this may all well fail. I cannot be expected to manage all the minutiae such an undertaking will require, so the bulk of the work will fall to you."

Naturally, the shadow did not reply, but Wily knew for a certainty that it understood. The rogue roboticist frowned as he noticed a slight irregularity in the shadow's composition. Biting his lower lip, he reached into the shadow's heart—a nightmare-labyrinth of loops, snarls and twists—and made the necessary adjustments. A few dexterous flicks of his fingers, and the shadow's heart shifted into alignment, bringing it that much closer to life.

Soon.

"Don't be jealous," Wily snapped, whirling on the shadow behind him. A hulking, ill-defined silhouette sulked silently in its appointed place. "Your turn will come. I just need to work on this one for now. You just concentrate on your job—when the time comes, it will be thankless but necessary."

He glanced at the wall above the doorway, where he kept his invisible map. Being invisible, he had found it exceedingly easy to hide the map from his captors—one of his more ingenious ideas, he decided. At first, he had considered making his shadows invisible as well, but eventually decided that they were too complex—they needed _real_ hearts to tether the rest of them to his battered brain.

_So, where to? Not the Andes,_ he decided. _Too many ghosts._ He narrowed his eyes and sorted through the layers he had placed on the map, peeling back each overlay and discarding it with his mind until nothing but the bare framework remained, lit by several glowing nodes.

_Too obvious. Too close to magnetic north. Too far from point D._ Every node on which his eye settled tripped off a laundry list of problems associated with it. Wily found himself furiously rubbing his bald scalp in distraction.

The first had been perfectly placed for his needs; now only radioactive ruins remained. He had calculated several tenable possibilities for a replacement, but—just like his shadows—its ultimate form was yet too nebulous to grasp.

"_Where_?" he snarled, grinding his teeth in frustration. His concentration had begun to lapse again; he needed to sit and rest. But an inchoate image had begun to resolve itself into reality over the map. If he stopped now, it would surely shatter, brittle as it was. So instead, he sat cross-legged and glared at the invisible map and the form that had begun to separate itself. His head throbbed: he could feel his left eyelid twitching. His mouth was dry.

_Dry. High and dry._

Years ago—even a single year ago—he had been a god. Able to create mechanized life from inert steel, a mechanical genius capable of comprehending complex robotics diagrams at a glance, Dr. Wily had been a paragon of his field.

Now he was a cripple; inspiration came in fits and bursts when it came at all. Bitter self-recrimination often gave way to rage. Today, however, he clenched his jaw and glared at the slowly forming image floating before his mind's eye.

It was a skull—a massive skull, its maxilla arched for a gateway and its orbits concealing so much automated weaponry as to make the fortress impenetrable.

_Of course, that's what I thought before. Fool! Misguided fool!_ He had sacrificed his sanity to the cause, and for nothing. The world still bleated and mewled for robots to save them from the filth humanity had spawned. The only man who still truly worked for good was on trial.

And there it was.

_Two gods were too many. The world needs a Morning Star._

Something shifted, and the image instantaneously blazed from a watery, frangible mirage into pure _eidos_. Wily sucked in a surprised gasp, overwhelmed. The vision was so complete, so grimly _lethal_, he felt as if he had just been given a hellish gift. Within the durasteel jaws awaited a new army—a new chance.

His shadows twisted, suddenly wreathed in smoldering fire. Dr. Wily smiled. Of course—he had been lacking the correct inspiration. Now that he had determined the sacrifice he would need to make, burning life seeped into his penumbral servants.

In recognition and gratitude, Wily spoke the thing's name.

"Moloch."

_Houston, United States_

Roll stood in a corner, away from the hustle and bustle of the main floor.

_A drink. How am I supposed to have a _drink_ with him?_ The female android clasped her arms close and closed her eyes to shut out unnecessary visual stimulation. _It's an order now. I _can't_ disobey._ She tested several logic gates and ran countless simulations in her head. Each ended either with her exposure as an android, or with the vertiginous feeling that indicated a considered breach of Core Module programming.

_Maybe I can abide by the letter of the agreement—let him buy me a drink, but refuse to drink it. _That idea held the most logical promise. An order to drink what he had bought her could be safely disregarded as a threat to her own safety.

"What are you doing here?"

Roll opened her eyes and found herself staring squarely into the glaring visage of Maria Eve. The LighTech executive was dressed in a dark grey pantsuit, and she tapped impatiently at her nanophone implant—no doubt replying to a dozen queries while waiting for Roll's explanation.

Roll _felt_ herself shiver this time. Energy flooded her system as her emergency subroutines initiated themselves in expectation of a possible life threat. The irises of her eyes opened further to extend her field of view for maximum tactical awareness.

"Miss Eve. What an honor to meet again," Roll answered sweetly. "You must be here for the LighTech presentation. I am told it is about to begin."

The senior executive folded her arms. "Stop being evasive and answer my question. Why are you here, robot?"

Something dangerous seethed at the back of Roll's prefrontal circuitry; it clawed rabidly against the constraints of the Core Module. She made sure to keep her smile utterly fixed. "I am acting as a telepresence 'bot for Dr. Light today," she replied. "Since he is away in Geneva, he asked me to come in his stead. He preferred my personal attendance over conventional telepresence."

Maria Eve rolled her eyes. "Yes, that sounds like the sort of eccentric, wasteful indulgence our fearless leader would endorse." She tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. "All right, then. Get back in there. My entrance is in less than five minutes, and I'd hate for your manufacturer to miss my keynote speech."

Roll suppressed a shudder of relief, and sourly told herself that Rock could get disassembled if he thought that this counted as an interruption of ancillary processes. "Yes ma'am," she said.

Maria Eve turned and stalked towards the backstage entrance, confident her command would be obeyed. Roll took a deep breath to fuel the emergency systems activated by the woman's presence. _Okay. I can make it through this. It's no more complicated than building a quasi-sentient virus-hunter. Even human interaction has its theoretical limits of variation._

Turning back towards the entrance to the hall, she nearly walked into a tall, ginger-haired man sporting a fierce-looking mustache and beard. He lurched backwards a step to avoid collision, and cleared his throat gruffly.

"Excuse," he growled. "My pardon—I am searching for Sennet area and was not pay attention."

Roll shook her head distractedly. "No, sir. I was at fault. Please excuse me." She accessed the event map and pointed down the hall. "I believe you will find the Sennet Robotics pavilion that way."

"Thank you," the man said, his gruff features approximating an expression of gratitude. He turned to leave, thought better of it, and turned back towards Roll, extending his hand. "Dr. Mikhael Cossack."

Roll shook his hand. "Helena," she introduced herself.

"This is quite the grip you have," Cossack said, his bushy eyebrows climbing to meet his shaggy mane of hair. He cocked his head slightly, scrutinizing Roll. His eyes widened slightly, and Roll felt her heart skip a beat—to use a human expression.

"Tell me your designation," the Russian roboticist said, firmly but quietly. His tone held none of the relieved warmth of moments ago.

Roll sighed. "DLN-002, Roll."

Cossack did not let go of her hand. "You are here to show me up, perhaps?" he growled. "Your Dr. Light is not content to dominate the market, he must also flaunt his masterworks?"

"Not at all," Roll protested. "We just came to watch."

"_We_?"

_I'm missing something,_ Roll realized. _This man—this Sennet roboticist—has a lot riding on this trade show. He's afraid Rock and I are going to sabotage it_. She extended her fingers to indicate she wished to be released from the large man's grip. He ignored the gesture.

"Dr. Cossack, my brother and I simply decided to attend this show because of curiosity—as you may or may not know, Dr. Light is in Geneva right now, unable to be here." She stood as straight as she could. "He thought we might enjoy some time away from the lab. We have no interest in interacting with demonstrations—truth be told, we don't even want to be recognized."

Something in the Russian deflated. At first, Roll thought he was shaking with inexplicable weeping, but after a moment, she realized that he was laughing. He released her hand—nearly flinging it away as if its touch scorched him. His laughter grew louder, though Roll was certain no mirth colored its overtones.

"You—you wish not to be _recognized_!" The syllables would have reverberated from the walls, had automatic sonic dampeners in the building already activated to keep his outburst from disturbing the other conference-goers. "She wishes not to be recognized! She is _curious_! She does not wish to _interact_ with the _demonstrations_! _Derrmo!_" He straightened angrily, "Such a thing I would not have suspected of your creator—he is said to be a fair-minded man. But this—this under-the-hand show you do! It upstages everything."

Roll glanced nervously from side to side and considered bolting for the door, but was afraid of what the volatile scientist might say or do.

_We shouldn't have come_. Variables and failed logic loops cascaded, and Roll shook her head violently. "I'm sorry to have troubled your, Doctor. I must return to my appointed place." Roll squirmed past the angry man, through the door to the main stage, and over the feet of protesting audience members, collapsing gratefully beside Rock.

"You came back," Hans beamed over her brother. "Good to see you. LighTech's show is just about to start."

Rock shot her a questioning glance. In a narrow-band burst, she replied, _We have trouble_.

_Houston, United States_

Mikhael Cossack slumped against the wall, his head in his hands.

_How? How could I have not seen this coming?_ He shot a withering glance down towards the Sennet Pavilion—Light's human-bot had been right about the directions, of course, but now he couldn't bring himself to enter his own domain.

LighTech had naturally been an expected competitor at the Trade Show. Mikhael had been looking forward to the competition their robots would provide. Confident that his own designs for Sennet's new robot master models would far outstrip LighTech's, he had arrived at the show full of optimism.

For a few hours, the snarled knot of dread—the fear of humiliation and failure that coiled around his heart and sank tendrils into his guts—had loosened and disappeared. But now his stomach gnawed itself, an old familiar churning that threatened him with headache and nausea.

Cossack rifled through his pockets, withdrew a small bottle, and emptied a pair of small yellow pills into his hand. With a practice motion, he popped them into his mouth. He had promised Kalinka he would try to take fewer of them—studies had shown that long-term use of proton-pump inhibitors was linked with bone fragility. It was one of the millions of annoyingly-accurate factoids his daughter had gleaned from her constant exposure to the Network. Right now, however, he knew his stomach would thank him for the relief.

_Of _course_ this was bound to happen_. With LighTech's robot master lineup this year consisting mostly of scientific research prototypes—'bots that would be difficult for _anybody_ to interpret as remotely warlike—the robotics mega-corp would also want people to remember that the first autonomous androids and the savior of humanity had been built by LighTech.

A bitter chuckle percolated from his throat. The natural, _instinctive_ discomfort that the android girl had clearly felt was a more damning comparison between Light's work and his own than any pre-fabricated demonstration could hope to show. All that the naturalized Japanese scientist needed to do to undermine Cossack's months of toil was to send his androids to wander the floors, asking questions and acting human.

_An underhanded tactic, given his reputation_. Mikhael's mind raced, and he turned his steps towards the pavilion after all—if nothing else, the relative solitude would give him time to think. Quickening his step, he tapped his nanophone implant and waited for the voice on the other end.

"Good afternoon, applied robotics."

"St. John," Cossack said quietly into the air, "We have a problem. Light sent his pet androids to upstage us. I need ideas, and I need to implement them in next hour or so."

He imagined his friend's pensive expression as the silence stretched from the other end of the line. The distance between himself and the pavilion shrank with long strides. His anxiety had begun to mount by the time Abejide's mellow voice finally replied.

"All right. We shall work to turn our weakness into now a strength." A remote-sounding trill told Cossack that on the other half of the conversation, his friend had activated the holographic schematics for their robot masters. "What is it that Light's androids are known for?"

"_Humanity_," Mikhael almost spat the word. "I just had an _argument_ with one. She seemed very human to me, St. John."

"Good." The Nigerian expatriate's voice held a slight tremor of excitement. "Good. I think I have a plan. Is our Enforcer online?"

"Yes." Cossack stopped just shy of the door, comprehension dawning. "Yes it is. And it is designed for the pacification of human beings in a prison setting. I believe I see your plan, my friend. And if not, I have just developed one of my own."

"Take care," St. John answered. "If you plan to activate our Enforcer against Rockman—even for demonstration purposes—we might well suffer a PR disaster. We must be seen as peaceably demonstrating our technology with a willing competitor."

A fierce grin stretched to Cossack's cheeks. The roiling feeling in his stomach had been smothered by a buzzing, exhilarating sense of resolve, tempered with the hope of vindication. "I believe this is something I can arrange," he replied.

"Mikhael . . ." The sureness in his friend's tone had faltered. "Are you certain of this? Perhaps you should check with Dr. Corbun—"

Cossack waved his hand dismissively in the air. "_Nyet_, he is in meeting with the delegation from Megabody Tech. To wait to ask his permission would be a fatal delay."

"You are impulsive, my friend. It is part of your brilliance." A warning note wove its way into St. John's speech. "Take a care. This impulse—I do not say it is a bad thing this time, but it is certainly a risk. I must tell you that I am already in the hot water with Dr. Corbun."

"What? Why?" Cossack sidestepped a group of small Danish robots scuttling down the hall.

"A project on which I worked years ago. It is not—how is it said—_relevant_ to today's problem. But it is my belief that Dr. Corbun may not take kindly to this plan if he feels you have been . . . plotting behind his back."

Long fingers ran through ginger hair. "Yes. Of course, you are right." A deep breath. "But I think this is a risk I shall take. St John, you did not _see_ this android. It was so like a girl—_ach_, my Kalinka makes this expression on her face sometimes! It is a master-stroke, what LighTech has done. Unless we take this course, our work shall look second class by comparison." _Again_.

The susurration of a sigh wended through the telelink. "Very well. I shall work on getting the firmware upgrades online by the time your are in readiness." St. John's voice was as calm and clear as if he were standing next to his friend, patting him companionably on the shoulder. "You of course will know if you must make any physical changes—or if there is even time."

Already mentally rerouting circuit pathways and tightening the frequency at which the buster would phase its plasma output, Cossack nodded. "Time is as always our foe. I shall speak with you again this evening."

"Good luck," Abejide said.

_Russians don't _have_ good luck_. Mikhael gritted his teeth and strode into the Sennet pavilion. _We have to make do with determination_.

_Houston, United States_

The applause thundered throughout the auditorium as Maria Eve strode onto the stage in front of the giant holographic LighTech logo. Her short heels clicked in choreographed precision as her self-assured, measured pace carried her to the center of the stage. Flanked by a dozen of the EG-series, their yellow carapaces reflecting the sheen of the spotlight, she clasped her hands together and bowed—the signal to activate the microphonic field around her.

"On behalf of the LighTech corporation, I'd like to thank you all for being here," she began. Amidst the sea of faces, occasional nanocamera lenses or robotic photoreceptors glinted with reflected light. Otherwise, the auditorium was a ghostland of pace human or near-human faces turned up towards the senior executive in anticipation.

_As it should be_.

Her opening spiel went off without a hitch—she didn't even need the prompting she had programmed into her nanophone implant. The audience applauded when appropriate, the robots performed their demonstrations in perfect synchronization, and the background music was tasteful but building towards a sense of excitement.

"Over the course of this show, our new product line will be on display at the LighTech pavilion," she announced. "But rather than distract you with the full array of our new lineup today, we thought you'd like to meet our most revolutionary new robot—a _new_ breed of robot that blurs the line between organic life and mechanical precision."

Behind her, the hologram of the LighTech logo stretched and metamorphosed into a giant tropical jungle, overgrown here and there with treeborgs as well as natural foliage. A troupe of lion-tailed macaques swung by on the ghostly photonic branches; interspersed here and there amongst them were larger robotic apes—drones meant for active environmental observation. The biokinetics groups had done a stellar job—the things moved just like real apes.

"One of the key tragedies to befall the world in the War was its massive deforestation," Eve pronounced. "Since then, teams of dedicated botanists and genetic engineers have worked tirelessly to restore the balance that was almost destroyed." She swallowed a sour expression. That phrase had been written by Light himself, and the board wouldn't budge on its inclusion in this presentation, regardless of the fact that it seemed extraneous to her.

At least she had successfully lobbied for the inclusion of the next bit. "But one of the greatest leaps forward in the fight to reclaim our damaged ecosystem came not from genetic engineering, but from the field of applied robotics." A massive treeborg—one of the earliest prototypes—bloomed and grew in the display behind her.

"We've all heard the story of how Dr. Hyrmue led a small team of scientists to create the first treeborgs. And though his company continues to produce these artificial tree-cyborgs, little is truly understood concerning the mechanisms by which the synthetic components interface with the organic." She took a breath. Time to shift gears.

"Imagine—what if we not only fully understood the process by which treeborgs thrive and multiply, but if we had the means to control it as well! LighTech envisions a future in which the gap that has been bridged by inspiration might be understood by analysis. In keeping with our company motto of 'Lighting the way to a better future through technology,' we began development of what we called Project Verdant last May." She quashed the impulse to glance to the side of the stage, where the star of the show stood expectantly. _Soon_.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she smiled, with a grand sweep of her arm. "It is my pleasure to introduce to you LighTech's next step towards a better future. Our first prototype 'biodroid'—Miming!"

Calmly, without the slightest trace of haste, the robot waddled onto the stage. By design, its appearance was fanciful bordering on comical—a large, cylindrical torso that resemble nothing so much as a massively thick log, short arms and legs, and a head whose anthropomorphic face peered out of a helmet—similarly log-shaped.

Stout and thick like the Norse forest troll serving as its namesake, each step of the robot's shook a panoply of leaves that grew from its torso and head on tiny branches. Its eyes were the same verdant color as the leaves, and glanced back and forth in placid contemplation of its audience.

The auditorium was silent, awaiting something more. Maria Eve smiled pleasantly—this was expected. After all, when Light had unveiled his first eight androbots, each had demonstrated its function in a dynamic and exciting fashion—how could you do that with a robotic dryad? She raised an eyebrow—just noticeably enough that the first several rows should be able to see it.

"Please, folks, hold your applause until the end of the demonstration," she quipped.

That brought the expected nervous laughter—a calculated decision. Once the audience had been maneuvered into a feeling of self-deprecation, it would be that much more likely to overcompensate with an enthusiastic outpouring of approval when the tech had been demonstrated.

And Maria Eve did so love outpourings of approval.

"It's true that Miming's abilities are less ostentatious than his LighTech predecessors," she continued. "He doesn't create bombs out of thin air, he doesn't shoot fire from his hands, and he isn't designed to explore arctic wastelands. And he certainly doesn't transform or break the sound barrier!" The audience chuckled again—not quite so nervously this time.

"No, Miming's ability is to interface with plants and trees," she explained. "Before I turn explanations over to him, you may be interested to know that none of his exoskeletal structure is synthetic—in partnership with Treeborg Enterprises and utilizing the proprietary technology that made treeborg cultivation possible in the first place, LighTech has produced a robot whose outer shell is literally composed of living plant tissue!"

There was some murmuring at that. _Good. They're starting to be grudgingly impressed._

"In order to protect his delicate internal sensor package, Miming has—of his own volition, I might add—chosen to grow a laminated trunk of hardened cypress that makes up his torso." She turned to the robot and gestured graciously, as if it could understand her. "Why don't you tell the people about it, Miming?"

The biodroid stepped forward and made a brief, awkward bow. "Thank you, Miss Eve. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Miming, LTI-P06. My functions may be difficult to place into words, but I shall attempt to do so for your convenience." He extended a splayed hand, palm upturned. Within it he held an acorn.

"This is a treeborg acorn," he said. Buzzing broke out amongst the audience, and a miniature galaxy of question-indicator lights flared into being, bathing the arched hall in a pale rosy glow. Maria Eve remotely selected the frequency for the correspondent who had made the most generous "donation" prior to the event, and indicated he could speak.

"Harold Chester, ," he introduced himself. "Treeborgs don't produce seeds." The acoustics system of the building amplified his voice so that his words could be heard by the entire auditorium. "Even the self-replicating treeborgs send up shoots or saplings."

"You are correct, sir," Miming answered. "Treeborgs don't produce seeds. I do."

The buzzing grew somewhat louder—just low volume enough to escape the notice of the buildings selective sonic dampeners, but just loud enough to create the subconscious thrill of excitement in the audience. Maria repressed a smirk. _I couldn't have _scripted _this better._

"I produced this acorn earlier today," Miming continued, his voice somewhat louder. "And I transmitted the data not only to our LighTech central Network hub, but also to every major treeborg manufacturer in the world. With time and research, way may soon be able to program treeborgs to produce seeds on their own." He raised his eyebrows, and the acorn. "With time and research, we may be able to teach treeborgs to produce _real_ seeds."

He made a fist, placing the acorn on his thumb, and then flicked it into the audience towards the reporter. "This is a gift from LighTech and myself to you, sir. Plant it in your yard or communal area where you live. I promise that it will grow to be an oak treeborg of special importance."

The reporter fumbled to catch the acorn, and held it aloft smiling for his photobot to record and post to the Network.

Another flood of red lights sprinkled across the room. This time, Miming pointed an index finger towards a reporter himself. Eve frowned, but remained silent. The more sophisticated the machine appeared, the better it would appear for LighTech.

The man who rose smiled. "Anand Sengupta, Wipro & Tata Conglomerate. This claim that you have made is truly impressive and inspirational, but why has LighTech chosen to create a robot to do this job rather than a computer? Surely, a purpose-built neurocomputer could be bigger and would have more capacity and ability to parse the data needed for such a huge undertaking?"

The tree-bot nodded. "An excellent question, sir. The answer is that a robotic platform is more mobile for field analysis, and requires less constant oversight. Because I am nearly fully autonomous, I can pick and choose my research projects as necessary, and can direct the actions of my subservient robots as necessary." He gestured off-stage. "But perhaps the most important reason is better demonstrated than explained."

A human-sized bipedal robot strolled into the stage, carrying a potted sapling on its back. The audience chuckled—though the robot itself had no color or decoration, its rough skeletal structure resembled nothing so much as a giant mechanized ostrich or chicken. It knelt beside Miming, who lifted the pot and placed it on the stage. The robotic bird-bot trotted off the stage.

"As an . . ." the robot seemed to grope for the correct word, "_ambassador_ between humanity and treeborgs, I can interpret the needs and impulses of artificial plant life and phrase it in human terms. Moreover, I can effect change to directly benefit the subject." He placed a hand onto the soil of the potted plant. Root-like tendrils extended from his palm into the dirt. Maria checked to be certain that the holographic display showed the amazing robot's synthroots connecting with the roots of the treeborg, as simply as a universal port.

"For example," the robot said, "this tree is growing restless because of lack of sun—it has been in storage in anticipation of this event for the past two weeks. Also, it was slightly over-watered this morning." He closed his eyes, as if concentrating. The hologram showed cartoonish blue arrows indicating water moving from the tips of the tree's roots and into the robot's hand.

He removed his hand from the soil and bent his knees, as if slightly squatting. Multiple thin streams of water spouted from the top of his head, like a sprinkler. The audience laughed aloud, and Miming smiled in a way that looked to Maria Eve disturbingly like self-deprecation.

"I shall add some leave to this tree so that its photovoltaic receptors can take fuller advantage of the light afforded by an indoor environment," he announced. Several of the leaves sprouting from his head and body detached and swirled around him like a floating green belt, before being whisked by an invisible force towards the tree and latching onto twigs.

"I calculate a significant increase in this treeborg's further growth towards optimal development today," he announced, and stepped back. "The tree will be awarded as a door prize to one of our audience members today as well."

Eve arched an eyebrow. _That_ hadn't been in the script, but she didn't mind. This push to project an image of LighTech as the environmentally responsible savior of the Earth could only assist in the drive to divorce it from the recollection that it had produced the robot masters that had brought society to its knees.

"Last question," she announced, as the audience clapped politely.

"Arturo Palacios, ," the last reporter called. "Miming, are you the only one of your kind? Does LighTech plan to produce more of you?"

Maria gritted her teeth while maintaining a stage smile. The _robot_ wasn't in charge of this show, _she_ was. The stocky biodroid answered anyway.

"I am the only prototype of my sort," he said. "I understand that a second unit is well into production, utilizing some of the data I have already extracted from my brief studies thus far. It may not be long before you meet my brother Balanis." He bowed again. "Thank you for your attention, honored guests. I am Miming; I am the forest spirit."

As the bandy-legged robot stumped off the stage, the room erupted into fulminating applause. Maria Eve waved goodbye to the robot, just as PR had ordered, before turning back to the audience. "Miming is a shining example of how LighTech is working to better our world," she said. "Our next model, the _Vertigos_, perfectly demonstrates the way in which robots can also bridge the gap between humans and the technology they build . . ."

_Unknown_

Smoke drifted from the robot's shattered carcass.

Quint brushed ash from his chest and surveyed the damage. This area had been some sort of retail zone, as far as he could determine. The blackened husks of buildings did little to confirm or deny his hypothesis, but his observation of the district's layout had been consistent with the distribution of buildings and intended traffic flow he had noticed in less damaged commercial zones.

Thousands of metools littered the area, all in various states of destruction. Quint had destroyed his share of them on the way in, but the streets had been choked with them before he had arrived. In fact, this part of the city seemed deserted except for mechanical corpses—and organic corpses.

He reached up and wiped a splatter of coolant from his visor with his free hand. He hadn't shifted the left arm from buster configuration since he arrived—the potential for damage due to the delay he might experience while shifting back and forth was too great to risk. It crossed his mind that he should have simply been built with a permanent buster.

Something sorrowful tickled that space of his mind where the firewalls burned away memory. He shrugged in irritation and kicked the rusting remains of a 16-KIF out of his way. Its cyclopean visage had been blasted away with pinpoint accuracy by either a laser burst or a high-yield concentrated buster weapon; the white-and-green armor was the only clue. Probably one of those damn mineral-concentrator 'droids.

A keening hiss, overlaid with the sound of clattering metal alerted Quint to his danger. He knelt cautiously and concentrated, pulling extra air in through the side-vents of his buster to charge it. A jaw-rattling throbbing hum accompanied the act, and residual energy pulsed from his left arm in the form of purple light.

Circular scissors-blades slashed through the air where his head had been a few seconds ago. Looping backwards in their course, they boomeranged towards their owner. Quint sprang to his feet and dashed forward, kicking rubble out of the way. Across the street, crouched behind a blasted car, was an Achilles model, its spherical crimson forehead bare of the trademark blades.

Before its weapons had returned to its hand, Quint loosed his blast, sending a basketball-sized ball of star-hot plasma streaking towards his enemy. It ripped a hole the size of a man through the darkened remains of the car, and tore the Achilles' legs off at the hips.

An angry, feral snarl burst from the thing's mouth as Quint charged forward, ducking under the returning rolling cutter. As the blades whispered over his head, he extended his right hand and snatched them from the air. In one fluid motion, he redirected their momentum downwards and into the thoracic cavity of the dying robot.

He didn't bother to look back as he rolled for cover. There would be others.

There were always others.

The next strike came as a synchronized attack from three different locations. Rolling cutters slashed through the air from his left, his right, and above. He smirked. Based on past experience, he could infer that his adversaries had already moved so that the return vector of the blades would be in a different direction, effectively cutting off his escape.

That might have worked ten years ago.

Instead, Quint leaped upwards, vaulting off a nearby lamp post, and sprayed an arc of burning plasma-bullets across the areas he calculated the Achilles had hidden. With luck, he would hit at least one.

Two of them jerked backwards from their hiding places, sporting smoking holes in their heads. Quint let his smirk stretch into an angry, fierce grin as he rushed towards the estimated location of the third. Twin shuffling crashes from behind told him that he had killed the other two instantly.

The last made no attempt to hide as its rolling cutters returned to its hand. Instead, it squared its shoulders and stood erect, waiting.

Quint snarled and formed a large diamond-shaped blade—like an oversized cartoonish _shuriken_—and hurled it at the robot. It stood still as the blade sliced off first one arm, then the other on its return trip. Quint leaped and landed with both feet on the chest of his antagonist. Satisfaction coursed through his circuitry as he heard and felt the lethal crunch of vital machinery underfoot.

"Stupid," he rasped. "Very stupid. Even for a relic like you."

The Achilles smiled brokenly. "Kill me, monster. The Disciples of the Blade will never bow to your tyranny."

"Ha!" Quint stood up and yanked the moribund machine to its feet. "Just for that, I'm going to let you live, you piece of crap." He rummaged through a storage compartment and withdrew a small blue marble. His motions vindictive, he jammed the hard sphere into the robot's mouth. "That'll ensure that you stay operational long enough to be torn apart by whatever still lives here. Enjoy the rest of your miserable, armless existence. If you make it back to your base before I get there, tell your worthless friends that I'm coming."

He turned south, towards his objective.

"Only a coward would leave me like this!" The robot's voice had degraded somewhat, but the anger and betrayal were still pronounced in its grating voice. Quint stiffened, and turned back.

Wordless, he placed his buster against the defeated 'droid's side. When he fired, something metallic and serpentine ripped into the robot, tearing at vital systems and activating a host of nociceptors before it disintegrated.

Now writhing in pain, his foe slumped to the ground, rolling over one of his severed arms, and producing a helpless, digitally-distorted shrilling shriek of agony. Quint calculated that it would bring whatever soulless cleanup squads still remained in this city to slowly tear the robot apart for components; with luck, it would still be alive when they did so.

"Stupid," he muttered, as he stalked away.

The killers were south—he was certain of it. And they would never escape.

_Palma, Spain_

The sharp tang of recent rain permeated the air in front of the Maximum Security Asylum.

The voices of the greeting committee were a haze of meaningless noise as he pressed his thumb against an ID-verification plate and let a security droid scan his retina. An anxious, thin man with greying hair introduced himself as Javier Delgato, Will's primary neuroregenerative therapist. Light nodded numbly and mouthed something empty and gracious.

The walls were institutionally white; the colored stripes at waist-height indicating the path through the labyrinth of the hospital-prison had been etiolated by age and the constant flicker of fluorescent lights. Dr. Delgato led Light through the maze, pausing momentarily at perceived points of interest to indicate security measures.

After the fourth such stop, Light almost snickered with the realization.

_He thinks I'm afraid of Wily. He's trying to reassure me that I'm physically safe._

"I appreciate all the security measures you have taken," he said carefully. Delgato's chest puffed out slightly, as if he had personally designed the systems and overseen their installation.

"I'm more worried about the state of my friend," he finished. The neurologist's posture deflated a bit, but he soon brightened up.

"I've been doing everything I can to restore his sanity. You can be sure of that, doctor." His English was excellent; Light didn't need to activate his translation program on the nanophone. "He simply stopped responding to my requests the other day, and has refused to speak to anybody until you arrived."

Light felt his heartbeat increase. What would he say when he saw Wily? What _could_ he say? The events the man had put in motion had pitted the erstwhile partners against one another on a global scale. Was there any common ground left? In retrospect, it seemed as though he and Will had been drifting apart in their friendship since before Blues . . .

_Revisionist history_, he chided himself. _He deserves the benefit of the doubt_.

They progressed through the seemingly endless hallways until they had reached the center of the complex. Light was suddenly stricken with a vision of Delgato as a bearded, venerable Virgil, guiding him through the nine rings of perdition. According to that metaphor, he almost expected to find Wily submerged up this waist in ice and munching on a miniature version of Judas.

"_Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate_," he murmured.

Delgato smiled at that. "_Through me you pass into the city of woe_," he replied. "I did not take you for a student of literature, Dr. Light."

"I taught myself Italian by reading _La Divina Commedia _and _Il Principe_," Light replied absently. "I suppose that phrase just stuck."

"He is no Lucifer, Dr. Light," Delgato cautioned. "He is a very sick man whose mind has been broken. We have put some of the pieces back together, but he may still seem . . . different than you remember."

Dr. Light took a deep breath. His palms were sweaty. Everything suddenly seemed very bright, even in this penumbral cloister. "Very well," he said. "Let's see what storm has been brewing over the past several months."

Javier Delgato motioned in an almost apologetic manner. "See if you can unravel this riddle for us, Dr. Light. Good luck."

The security guards one either side of the door scanned Dr. Light's thumbprint and retina again, while he stared blankly at the red-lettered _CUIDADO_ printed on the white door. Light grey fingerprints and handprints smudged the edge of the door—as if nobody kept it open long enough to properly clean those spots.

With a _whoosh_ of air, the door slid to the side, and Dr. Light stood face-to-face with Dr. William Albert Wily, standing directly behind the threshold, hands clasped behind his back.

Expression serene, the German roboticist motioned towards the room.

"Hello, Tom," he said quietly. "Won't you come in?"


	7. Chapter 5: Enigma

"_In retrospect, it seems obvious what Will's plan was. Like a master chess player, he not only placed the pieces where they would be the most advantage to him, but he also found ways to use his opponents' positioning against them. The signs were there; maybe if I had been less intent on staying out of jail myself I might have seen them. But that's all part of being human—as I'm sure you'll learn, X."_

-excerpt from holovid recording by Dr. Thomas Light, 20XX

**Chapter 5**

**Enigma**

The Broken Man sat on a rock and pondered the lizard in front of him.

Its head was bright orange, its body navy blue, and its tailed ringed with neon-blue stripes. Tiny bright blue dots spotted its back as it stretched in the sunlight. The pool beside which the rock, the lizard and the android all sat dappled the glade with reflected radiance, the bright light-shadows forming a wobbling web across the nearby tree trunks. In the small pond, tiny yellow fish sparkled as they zipped here and there.

He had been sitting here for hours, watching the lizards come and go. He had noted that this particular lizard had arrived on the rock a sort of dull brown color with tan spots, and had changed colors into this brilliantly gaudy creature within a matter of minutes. If it was counting on the display to attract a mate, it appeared destined for disappointment.

_Who fixed this?_ The question had plagued him for the past few days. He had trudged unceasingly through miles and miles of dense jungle, unmolested by insects or predators. Nothing with a sense of smell would come anything near him. He had eventually stopped and used several large leaves and some water to rinse the worst of the filth from himself and his clothing. Since then, he had seen a few large, spotted hunting cats, but they had kept their distance.

He couldn't remember much, but one of the few touchstones of his existence to which he felt sure he had clung was that he was broken. Broken, faulty—_defective_. The thought sent a tingle of rage and resentment through him—a directionless, angry needle prodding him . . . where? To accomplish what? Try as he might, the answers slipped away, furtive as the little fish that darted back and forth in the pool.

Yet, somebody had fixed him. That meant that in the whole world, there was at least one person who was not his enemy. He had done his best to stabilize the complex rush-job that had been performed by his mysterious benefactor by rerouting some energy through backdoor relays. His auto-repair systems had already begun to adapt the new circuitry into his primary power matrix; that, too, stabilized it.

Nettled, he leaned back slowly and looked at the sky. The lizard—terrified of the sudden movement—scampered back to the safety of the dense jungle undergrowth. He paid it no mind; he had enjoyed its laconic company and its colors for long enough, and he did not wish to sit still forever.

_I like the color_, he decided. _Blue—like my eyes. Not bad._

A large bird soared overhead, and the sound of the jungle insects was omnipresent. The Broken Man adjusted his shades and listened to the wind. It was pleasant to listen to the air currents modulate their pitch as they passed leaves, tree trunks and rocks.

His auto-repair systems had finally begun to make some significant progress on the damage to his left leg. He estimated it would be less than a week of walking before he was doing so without any abnormalities to his gait. Of course, if he sat still, the process would take less than two days—but the thought of sitting still for that long made his head ache almost as much as the conflict between his core module and his main power transfer.

After appreciating the languid disorder of the clouds in the sky for a few more minutes, he sat up, gingerly tested his weight on his injured leg, and slung his lucky charm over his shoulder. The wind ruffled his hair—back to its original chestnut color now that he had taken the time to clean some of the oil and coolant out of it, and he grinned.

_Still no idea where I'm going—but I guess that doesn't matter_.

Whistling a jaunty tune, he took up a deliberate, measured pace away from the glade and its colorful lizard.

_Houston, United States_

"How's _that_ for impressive?"

Rock shook his head once, blinking. Hansel Hoffer's voice had penetrated something grey and murky, and he found himself reactivating nonessential systems, as if he had been in stasis for some time. He gazed uncomprehendingly at the martial artist.

The blond man guffawed. "You must have gotten in on the red-eye. You actually _slept_ through the wind-tunnel 'bot demo, didn't you?"

Rock shook his head again. "I . . . I suppose I did."

Roll fixed him with a glare halfway between annoyed and alarmed. "Jeez, 'Rocky', didn't you sleep enough _this morning_?"

He made a show of stretching. "_Overslept_, I would say. What were the high points?"

"When did you tune out?" Hoffer asked. Rock smirked; the man who no idea how appropriate the colloquialism was in the android's case.

Rock ran a hand through his raven hair. "After Maria Eve's opening comments about the importance of continued research into aerodynamics for our next-gen hypersonic jets." There had been more, of course. Eve had deftly pointed out that the recent advent of faster-than-light travel also opened access to new atmospheres with different densities and varied gravitational states.

The _Vertigos_ model had walked onto stage—an unlikely study in midnight blue and goldenrod, its torso an inverted triangle dominated by a massive fan assembly. Ruby-glinting eyes calmly gazed out from above the huge fan. Rock had found himself wondering whether the vocoders were located anywhere near the fan-mouth, or somewhere else. After that . . . nothing.

"I guess right after it walked out on stage," he admitted.

Hoffer rolled his eyes. "Man, there's no way I'll be able to remember all that techno-babble." He narrowed his eyes. "Did you not work on this one at all?"

Rock shrugged. "Strictly hush-hush, like the biodroid. I do a lot of travel to Gladstonbury, where we do a mostly metool and KIF manufacturing. We used to make Heracles models, but . . ."

"Sure," Hans nodded. "I would guess that demand for those dried up pretty quick after the Robot War."

Rock suppressed a stab of emotion and replied, "So even though it was my own company, anything she said up there was probably news to me."

"Well, its big mouth can generate stronger than hurricane-force winds. We're talking about the sort of resistance needed for wind-tunnels, here. And it has some sort of thing on its arm to generate smaller pockets of 'thermal disturbance' if I remember correctly." Hoffer smiled at his own speech. "Hey, that didn't sound half-bad. Guess my head's good for more than just kickin' around once in a while."

He glanced at his watch. "Speaking of which, I need to get going. My demonstration is starting in less than half an hour, and I need to stretch and put on my gear."

Rock raised an eyebrow. "I have to admit I'm curious."

Hoffer grinned—that same, enigmatic smirk from before. "Well, then, looks like I've done my job right. Why don't you come take a look; the demo will be down by the Omnitech pavilion." He leaned forward so that he was looking at Roll. "I'd be pleased if you came to see as well, Miss Sulla."

Roll held her hands palms-up. "You never can tell. I'll see what I can wedge it into my schedule here. That is, if there's any time between your demonstration and my having drinks with you to actually see what I came to see."

Hoffer made a mock bow. "I can see I need to start practicing some _verbal_ judo as well," he replied. "I'll see you two later, then." So saying, he turned and navigated his way through the press of bodies leaving the auditorium.

Roll immediately hissed, "And _you_ were giving _me_ a hard time! _Falling asleep_? You'd think with the amount of time you just spent in stasis you'd be fully charged! Do you need some sort of repairs to your power transfer coils that we didn't know about?"

Puzzled, Rock shook his head. "I don't think so. All indications are that this static period had nothing to do with a power recharge. And it wasn't a social emulation response, either. My diagnostics list it as an 'ideopathic transient loss of higher function.'" His lips twisted into a frown as he said it. "How completely unhelpful."

Roll stood and folded her arms. "Well, that does it. After I honor this ridiculous bargain, we're getting out of here, before you have a narcoleptic episode in front of somebody."

Chuckling at the absurdity of it, Rock also stood. "And here I was planning on taking you to task for your blushing and flirting." His expression turning more somber, he said, "What problem did you encounter outside of the hall when you left?"

Roll's countenance grew even stormier. "Have you ever heard of Dr. Cossack?"

Rock sifted through his files of human nomenclature; he finally discovered a match. "He's attached to Sennet isn't he? The head of one of their research teams. Why, did you meet him?"

Roll nodded. "He recognized me—he seemed to think that we'd come to sabotage his demonstration—whatever that is."

"Hmmm." Rock began to walk slowly towards the auditorium's exit. "Well, we'll just steer clear of it. That should allay his fears. No need to cause trouble here, after all. To be honest, I sort of felt like we were pushing it a bit to sit in the human section of the hall, here." He held up a hand, forestalling Roll's inchoate rejoinder. "No, I didn't _object_, and it was obviously important to you, so I didn't push it."

"We were keeping a low profile here in the auditorium," Roll answered. "Maybe we could just try to keep doing that throughout the rest of the day here." Even as she said it, she knew it sounded unlikely; Rock's was one of the most famous faces on the planet now—she assumed it was only the darkness of the auditorium and the unexpected context that had prevented Hansel Hoffer from recognizing his conversation-mate.

Rock shook his head. "Mister Miller from the receiving bay already knows that we're here. And I'd just as soon avoid any subterfuge." He stepped through the doorway out into the main atrium. "But it occurs to me that I may need some help from you; there may be people that . . . that my double met while I was in stasis. I don't want to cause any confusion or suspicion by not remembering what 'I' already said."

His sister nodded slowly. "Good point. All right, we'll stick together. If there's anything you need to know about previous meetings or conversations, I'll narrow-band it to you so that you can respond appropriately." She put an index finger on her chin, propping it up. "We had a system in place to download the transcripts of those conversations into your memory banks when you awoke. I guess I was just too excited about the possibility of getting out of the house with you to recall that."

A sable eyebrow arched over Rock's hawk-blue eyes. "As I recall, my method of waking was enough to shift secondary processes like that right out of your frontal circuitry."

Roll smirked, and Rock found himself gazing at a golden mirror of his own expression. Almost.

"What are you looking at?"

Rock waved his sister away, and starting walking down the hall. "I just noticed that your expressions have begun to deviate from mine. I suppose it's only logical—you've been operational for six months longer than I have, now, and you've had a different set of experiences and human interactions. It makes sense that your facial expressions would be altered by those circumstances."

"You two!"

Rock turned on heel towards the voice. He recognized the LighTech executive from up on stage—Maria Eve. A focused burst of data from Roll told him that they had not met before. The data was tinged with an angry, resentful overtone. Rock restrained himself from turning towards his sister for clarification.

"Good afternoon, Miss . . . Eve, was it?" Rock smiled and extended a hand.

The woman glanced at his hand, but made no move to shake it.

"You shouldn't be here," she said flatly. "At least unit 2 has an assignment. But your presence here can only complicate matters. I thought the Board made it clear that except for authorized publicity appearances, you were to remain on standby."

Rock tilted his head, his mind racing. _Standby?_

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you, ma'am," he replied.

Eve rolled her eyes. "Oh, stop with the human colloquialisms," she snapped. "I'm not one of the children at the robot museum, all right? Just say 'does not compute,' or something."

"That would just be awkward," Rock replied. "Is there something I've done to offend you, Miss Eve? I don't believe we've met, but you're treating me quite rudely."

"You're not supposed to _be_ here," the woman repeated. "I don't know what Light thinks he's playing at, sending his two pets here to disrupt things! This Trade Show is about the _future_ of LighTech, not its sordid past." A finger stabbed at Roll. "If _she's_ here just to be telepresence, then fine. Nobody will recognize her, anyway. But _you!_" She took a breath, as if to steady herself. "You're just a walking reminder of everything this company is trying to make people forget! The stockholders need the public to see that LighTech is working towards applied sciences, not military thugs!"

Rock folded his arms. "My apologies for reminding the world that Dr. Light was the only person on the planet capable of mounting a defense against Dr. Wily's insanity. That must be a real hardship for you." He leaned slightly forward. "Now listen, Miss Eve. I respect that you and the rest of the corporate structure of LighTech work with Dr. Light to make his dreams for a better world profitable. But that has nothing to do with me. I came to spend some time with my sister, and you're not my boss."

"I'm a _human_!" It was almost a shriek.

Rock raised his eyebrows. "You're also sort of a jerk."

All color drained from the woman's face. After a moment, her cheeks grew flushed. Rock noted her hands had clenched into half-fists. Grinding out her syllables with practiced disdain, she growled, "Robot. Leave at once. Return to your lab and power down. Stay there until the Board tells you otherwise."

Something tugged at the back of Rock's mind—an uncomfortable mixture of annoyance and anxiety. His core module barked at him to obey. Something else—something deeper—told him to silence this woman immediately for her insolence. Troubled, he batted down both urges, and flagged the aberrant data for analysis later.

"Get lost, lady," he said. "I've been more than patient with you, but I don't need this sort of treatment from _anybody_ right now. The only person who gets to order me around is Dr. Light—and he's out of town at the moment." He turned towards Roll, who was beaming. "Let's get going, sis."

"I'm calling security," Eve snapped.

Rock ignored her as he and Roll walked away.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

Roll's expression soured somewhat. "I don't know, really. She visited our house and ordered me and Eddie around." Her jaw jutted angrily. "She had something private to discuss with Dr. Light. And then when I walked out earlier, she ordered me back in. I told her I was telepresence." Rock saw her shudder slightly. "I _hate_ that woman!"

Both of them stopped abruptly, silent. Rock stared agape at his sister.

"That . . . is a dangerous thought to have," he finally said, pitching his voice low. Fragments of data arranged themselves in interlocking fractals. A pattern quickly emerged from the dizzying amount of information, leading Rock to a single, alarming conclusion. "Your shuddering—the 'personal' matter. It's a result of a conflict with your core module, isn't it?"

Roll averted her gaze silently.

"I can help," Rock urged. "You _know_ I have experience with the errors that result from a conflict between priority programming and—" he searched his lexicon for a term that adequately expressed his meaning. "—free will."

His sister remained mutely intransigent.

"Fine." He restrained himself from rolling his eyes or saying, _Don't blame me if you go into mind freeze_. Instead, he said, "If you want to discuss it some time, let me know."

Roll turned her back on him and began to walk. "Come on," she called, without looking back. "We won't have a chance to look over Yamusho's swarm robotics display before Hoffer's demonstration if you waste time back there."

The ebon-haired android found his social emulation subroutines prompting a sigh.

_Palma, Spain_

"Will," Light said calmly. "You needn't have stood on ceremony just for me."

The specter of a grin moved under the prisoner's features, riffling the chaos of a bushy mustache in its passing. Iron-grey eyebrows twitched towards the ceiling a fraction of a millimeter. Otherwise, Light's former partner remained silent and expressionless.

"Very well." Thomas Xavier Light squared his shoulders and marched forward into the cell that had been his friend-turned-nemesis' room for half a year. His cerulean eyes darted back and forth, taking in details: a large, square room, austere but for a ring of several dozen Rubik's cubes, arranged in eight clusters.

_Something_ . . . He felt his brow cloud for a moment as he gazed at the arrangement of colorful toys. Even fallen into a mire of insanity, Dr. Wily was an intellect unmatched by any but a handful across the globe. Something about the arrangement of the colors in the carefully-jumbled huddles tugged at Light's analytical mind.

He turned back towards Wily, who gazed at his visitor with the intensity of a circling falcon. "A little side project, Will?"

_That_ evoked a full smirk. Deep furrows carved a mask of careworn bitterness in Wily's face as he replied, "Don't trouble yourself, Tom. My jailors have been tying themselves in knots for months trying to piece together even the smallest part of it." He cocked his head—just a little too far to the right—and continued. "Just think of it as a way for me to keep my wits in this sterile perdition." He gestured towards the room's lone chair. "Please, have a seat."

Reflexively, Light looked around for another chair. "Where will _you_ sit?"

Wily snapped his fingers irritably. "Oh, for God's sake, Tom! Just sit in the damn chair—it's not like they're going to let us have very long, you know."

With a roll of his eyes, the aging roboticist acquiesced and sat down. He quirked an eyebrow, not quite sure what to say. Wary that the wrong word might provoke a psychotic episode—or worse, a devolution of his former comrade's state of mind—he kept his peace.

Silence stretched across the space a several moments. Light's heart beat against his ribs. He was sure that the noise would betray his anxiety, but Dr. Wily made no comment. Something tickled the back of Light's throat, and he coughed uncomfortably.

_This is ridiculous. _One_ of us has to say something_.

Wily threw up his hands in exasperation. "What the hell is this? You speak dozens of languages, but you can't manage a few words in English for me? _Talk to me!_ I can talk to myself any time, you know. And stop," he snapped, as Light opened his mouth. "Don't try to be politic—I get that meaningless dross from everybody else around here." His eyes turned pleading. "Just _talk_ to me like a human being."

Light sighed. "Sorry, Will. It's just . . . where do we even begin?"

Tension buzzed silently in the room for the space of a few heartbeats. Wily broke it with a sharp, barking laugh. "Ha! Look at us—two grizzled old bears too proud to admit they were wrong." He crossed the space between himself and Light and promptly sat on the table, looking down at his partner. "Of course, most of the time, I'm in here and you're out there."

"I didn't try to murder millions of innocents," Light replied evenly.

Wily blanched, but quickly recovered his poise. "Don't mince words, Tom. Why don't you just say what you _really_ think? No, you didn't _directly_ try to commit mass murder. You just led humanity by its nose to a place where it couldn't live without you or your knowledge." He thrust his face forward, hawkish nose almost touching Dr. Light's. "_Did you ever think of what might happen to them if you suddenly disappeared?_"

A threat? Light dismissed the notion. The light that burned behind his friend's eyes was tinted with something akin to madness, but not violence. Accusation? Fear?

_No. Honest worry._

"Humanity can survive without me, Will. It was here before I came, and it will be here long after I'm gone."

"Bullshit." Wily's vulgarity brooked no argument. "Look at what they did to themselves before. I gave them a gift for the betterment of humanity, and they nearly destroyed themselves with it."

Light shook his head. "We've learned a lot since, then. All of us. The kewbee—"

"If they'd learned anything, it wouldn't have been so easy for me, Tom."

Gooseflesh raked Light's skin. _Easy?_

"For better or for worse, Tom, we made ourselves gods." Wily sat straighter as he spoke, a declamatory tone imbuing his words with an operatic authority. "We dragged the world back from the abyss of the hell it had inflicted on itself, and we gave it life. We rescued it from fire, famine, disease and hardship. We rescued it from the _need_ to protect itself!"

Light chuckled, despite himself. "Listen to you—it's _me_ you're talking to, Will, not the graduating class of MIT. You can lay off the professorial airs."

The old Dr. Wily would have been deflated by the humor, would have chuckled along with his friend. The man in the institutional orange jumpsuit across from him glared and tensed, as if he would strike his partner.

"You think it's a joke?" Wily's tone was mild, but his eyes were hard chips of flint. "Look at how they had to scramble when _one_ of us decided to end the cycle! And instead of helping to make them self-sufficient, you warped your prized invention into an instrument of death!"

"Rock never killed anyone," Light rejoined quietly. "He was a warrior for peace."

"Peace!" Wily snorted. "You don't honestly believe—" He stopped short, rolling his eyes. "No, of _course_ you do. You still don't see that _you _were in the wrong!"

Light clasped his hands to keep himself from making fists. "How could saving millions of innocent lives from the holocaust you and your . . . your allied _fanatics_ let loose be anything but a strike for peace?" Realization struck, lighting quick, razor sharp. His breath caught in his throat. "You're not sorry at all!"

Wily shook his head. "Only half right. I'm sorry for the _results_ of my actions. I'm not sorry for the steps I took to try to bring the world back from the brink of its pig-headed self-immolation." The iron cast of his features didn't soften, but his eyes grew more shadowed, the lines beneath emerging as clearly as razor-cuts. "I _am_ sorry for the people we killed, you and I."

"_I_?" Light's outrage strangled any further outburst.

"Of course," Wily answered, shaking his head sadly. "I've been trying to tell you, Tom. You're as culpable as me. You may not have pulled the trigger, but you built the gun. Hell, you not only built the gun, you pointed it at its victims, painted a target on their chests, and left behind a detailed set of instructions on how to proceed." He held his hands up, placating. "And yes, I'm just as guilty. Because I _did_ pull the trigger."

Thomas Light spoke through clenched teeth. "And there's the difference. There are some lines I _won't_ cross, Will. Never."

Wily sighed. "That's because when it comes right down to it, you're weak."

"Why did you ask for me, Will? Catharsis? Did you need to tell me how stained my hands are to make your stay here more palatable?" Light kept his voice steady. "I'm already on trial for my part in the Robot War, and the company we built is trying like hell to pull away from me so that it doesn't fail in the wake of my inevitable conviction."

"_We_ built?" the German robotologist's sneer could curdle milk. "That's a different tune than the one you sang in Stockholm, accepting your coveted prize."

"I didn't covet the prize," Light argued. "_I_ offered to refuse it because it didn't have both of our names on it!"

"What a safe offer to make," Wily snarled, "knowing that I'd never ask you to do it."

"Well, it doesn't matter now." Light fought to make his tone hard-edged without becoming brittle. "If things turn out as I fear, I may be joining you soon. Would that make you happier?" He massaged the bridge of his nose. "Will, _why_ did you make me come here?"

Wily's shoulders bunched together as he leaned forward, hands pressed flat against the table. "Maybe I was lonely. You have no idea, Tom. It's been horrible." A gnarled hand slid from his forehead down to his chin. "Some days I can't even speak. It's been better lately, but still . . . I can't even tell sometimes which thoughts are mine, and which—" He bit his lower lip and cast a quick glance over his shoulder towards the ring of cubes.

Light followed his gaze, uneasy.

Several moments passed, Wily glaring with fixed intensity behind him. His fingers worked nervously, as if typing at an old-fashioned keyboard. His jaw twitched spasmodically. Dr. Light found himself hesitant to speak, as if to do so would threaten some delicate balance. After what he judged to be several minutes, however, he gently cleared his throat.

Wily spun towards him, and instantly recoiled, as if he had been slapped.

"Tom! It's not _right_!" Frantic in its delivery, the phrase could not begin to match the hunted look in Wily's eyes. "Holocaust, if we don't act! They'll _die_, Tom! All of them!"

_And as easily as that, the thread of sanity is broken_. Light sighed and took his friend's hand. "Don't worry, Will. We won't let them die."

"No," Wily muttered, half to himself. "Won't let them. Won't let . . ." He jerked his gaze above his partner's head, and broke into a grin. "It's all right. If we have to, we'll hide with Moloch until this blows over."

"Oh, Will." Weeping would solve nothing, so Light just let the sorrow seep through his bones and melt into a dark place in his heart. "Why did you do it? What have you done to yourself?"

"Myself?" Wily's voice was sharper, again. His grasp fluttered in Light's hand, then grew stronger. After a moment, his other hand gripped his former partner's shoulder, viselike. "I _am_ myself, unadorned. We were gods, Tom. Gods!" His smile vanished, replaced with steel resolve and authority. "We had it in us to save or destroy them, and they cast us down like lepers. They cast _me_ down! They had no right—who were _they_ to judge?"

Light stared, repelled but unafraid, at the increasingly manic expression on his rival's face. Something important was taking place in the German roboticist's mind, and Light would plumb the depths if he could.

"And then—a chance! A chance to claim all that was due us—our due as saviors!" Wily gritted his teeth until it seemed as if they would crack. "Why did I do it, Light?"

Dr. Light almost flinched at the formality of Wily's address. It recalled the hard, driven man he had met decades ago: a near-stranger who saw in Thomas Light only a potential rival or a potential tool to be used and discarded as convenience might dictate. Almost, William Albert Wily had reverted to that younger, more impetuous man. The iron-bladed timbre of bitter weariness laced through the voice, however, could only come from decades of hurt and toil.

"Why did I _do _it? Because I tired of hearing the truth I'd spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.Because they would not be guided by our wisdom—better to have them as our slaves than our captors! Better to _force_ them down the right path than let them choose suicide again." Wily's head tilted alarmingly. "I did what I did, Dr. Light, for two very simple reasons. Because they _deserved_ it." He smile had lost its comradely warmth.

"And because _we_ deserved it!"

_Old Stuttgart, New German Republic_

Christer adjusted his suit and his emerald-colored tie, and inspected the results of his work in the looking glass once more.

His good hand had been polished to a gleaming, mirrored chrome. He smiled, his expression akin to that of a man regarding a well-trained and beloved pet, and pulled on a long leather gauntlet. It would not be needed tonight, except in its capacity as a replacement for his old hand. His silver hair was immaculate, and his eyes naturally enhanced by his tie.

Pale features rearranged themselves in a quizzical smirk as the stains of Friedrich Schorr singing _Johannistag! Johannistag!_ wended through the hallways of his apartment, underscored by the rhythmic stumping sound of Edward's approach. Christer turned to acknowledge his servant as the short, red robot ambled into his master's private chamber, still producing the music.

"A message?" He raised an eyebrow. "It must be of supreme importance if Freder believes he must send it with you." Edward's communications had been upgraded with aftermarket additions, such that secure messages sent via his network were nearly untraceable. "Well, out with it, before I miss my flight," he ordered.

The fliptop 'bot popped its storage compartment open, and a holographic image of Christer's nominal employer—and secretly his top lieutenant for the Cause—flickered into a ghostly existence.

"Rottewange," the man began without preamble. "I have news of the greatest import. A chance has come for us to advance our agenda."

Christer felt his pulse quicken at the use of his pseudonym; that meant official business for the Sons of Light, inasmuch as the actions pursued by a group such as theirs might be considered "official." He nodded towards the image, reciprocating with the man's own name claimed for the Cause.

"Johann. I hear you. Speak, and speak quickly, for I must be gone in minutes."

"We've made contact with one of the Herr's jailors. She says she can arrange for his escape, if we are ready to assist her." Freder's photonic features curled into a lupine grin. "By week's end, we could have a true beginning to Stage I, Rottewange!"

Andersson's cheeks were already warm with his excited namesake blush. "Too easy, my friend. Can this woman be trusted?"

"Absolutely not." Freder's dark eyebrows met in a fiercely amused chevron above his molasses-colored eyes. "Preliminary 'net work indicates she has been in contact with at least one operative for the HSL in Spain, with indications of human-supremacist leanings since the Robot War."

"Perfect," Andersson smiled. "Good work, Johann. Arrange for a meeting. Tomorrow evening should work. I will fly to Spain if need be."

"I understand," replied the ghost-image, before fading into the gloom.

Christer stretched and waved Edward away. Caution was of the utmost importance in such a delicate undertaking, but he felt his trademark impetuousness kindling in his heart. The pieces had all begun to fall into place. The HSL would doubtless leap upon the liberation of Dr. Wily as a way to attempt to discredit the Sons of Light. Inafune would provide the perfect cover of legitimacy that the Sons of Light would need.

And as for their father . . .

Well, with a little luck, the Sons of Light would have him in their grasp soon enough as well. Then the Revolution could _truly_ begin.

With a thought, Andersson deactivated the lights in his suite and walked towards the door. His flight would leave in less than an hour, and he could not afford to be late in his arrival at Houston. Much depended on the outcome of his machinations there.

_Houston, United States_

Maria Eve stood in the corner, breathing heavily.

The encounter with Light's pet robots had shaken her more than she cared to admit; was unit 1 malfunctioning dangerously, or had Dr. Light lied to her and the Board? Either possibility frightened her, not so much for the consequences promised, as for the unknown quantity that each introduced into the mix.

If the Rockman hardware or software had begun to degrade to such a point that its Priority One module now malfunctioned, the robot posed a serious threat to human safety—and worse, to quarterly earnings. A public breakdown or outburst could harm LighTech's tenuous image irrevocably.

If Dr. Light had been lying from the beginning about the inclusion of the Asimovian Laws in his humanoid robots—well, that would make things infinitely more complicated, both from a legal and from a commercial perspective. She activated her implant and made a note to speak with the founder of her company as soon as possible. That done, she turned her thoughts back towards the android and the immediate quandary it presented.

Human security would be no match for the machine if it had developed irregular tendencies in its central programming; Maria smoothed her jacket and took a steadying breath. Her threat to call security had not been a bluff—not exactly. However, now that she considered her ultimatum, she realized that she didn't know of a convenient way to neutralize the threat—especially not without drawing attention to its malfunction.

An insistent, angry voice yammered at her—one that had been stifled by her rigorous study in business school and relentless maneuvering in the corporate world. The voice had rarely troubled her since she had escaped her childhood of misery and hardship—since the roaring, terrifying fights between her parents, or the sad, pitying looks of the police officers. Since she had wrested power over her life from the shards of a broken family—her broken life—she had beaten the insidious voice and the feelings that came with it into whimpering retreat.

Now, it whispered. _Out of control—it's all getting out of control, and you can't stop it!_

Clamping a vise of severity over her runaway fears, she gritted her teeth. Not today. Just like the stock dive after the Robot War, today's incident was nothing she could not handle. _The solution is here, I just need to _see_ it._

She made for one of the myriad refreshment stands first. Raking her gaze across her environs, she confirmed that none of her underlings were nearby—she needed some chocolate and some coffee before she was ready to face this, but she couldn't afford to be seen indulging in such weakness before her peers or subordinates. The omnipresent fear of deposition from the station for which she had worked murderously hard settled over her—a mantle of heavy dread.

Her nerves and stomach combined forces to win out over the fear of being seen behaving like a human being. A power snack wouldn't take more than a few minutes; she could salvage the situation then.

The robot staffing the snack stand said something banal and pleasant as Eve scanned the menu selection on the screen, tapped it, and pressed her thumb against the credit square. She noted with a stab of disgust that fine tremors shook her hand. Forcing her mask of cool indifference harder over her features, she accepted the steaming coffee and the chocolate éclair from the sterile steel hands of the servbot, its empty face contorted into a mockery of a grin.

_Stupid girl!_ It was her father's voice. _You think you're better than us? You're just like your worthless mother!_

"Shut up." It was a ferine growl that escaped her lips. She looked back and forth again, terrified that somebody might have heard her _sotto voce_ outburst. Relief and chagrin spilled over her in equal measures as she noted a lack of observers. She stuffed the éclair into her mouth to choke any further embarrassments she might utter.

_I'll call the tech guys in Redmond_, she decided. _They must have access to the emergency shutdown codes for each of the robots._ Even as she thought it, however, she knew such action would be fruitless; Light had clearly shown preferential treatment to his pet androids; they would almost certainly be registered under his private files rather than in the corporate database.

So lost was she in her own thoughts that she had wandered down the hall, unconscious of any destination other than _away_. She sipped at her coffee and glanced up to orient herself. She found herself standing less than fifty feet away from a large pavilion, its corporate logo emblazoned with a stylized "S" curling around a star. The motto _Tomorrow's technology made affordable today!_ ran in sleek, silver letters under the company's name.

Sennet.

Maria Eve peered curiously into the shadowed interior of the pavilion. It had clearly not yet been opened for public display, and a swarm of technicians worked feverishly around a table on which lay a humanoid robot. Chief amongst them was a tall, ginger-haired man dressed in slacks and a good shirt, its sleeves rolled up and the tie circling his neck loosened as he gestured frantically at the team, often pushing them out of the way in order to make an adjustment himself.

_Cossack_. It could be none other. _Perfect_. Her sources indicated that the volatile head designer for Sennet's cybernetics department pursued a one-sided rivalry with Dr. Light that might be exploited for corporate benefit.

Or, in this case, to bring some measure of control back into a day whirling wildly out of the blond executive's sphere of influence. Taking a deep breath, Maria Eve smiled and strode into the pavilion.

_Tokyo, Japan_

Bess Angelwood kicked open the door.

The mocking laughter of her classmates echoed in her head. Though hours past, her embarrassment and shame burned hot enough to crisp her cheeks and ears. Life wasn't _fair_! Why did the words for 'donkey' and 'noodle' have to sound so similar in this stupid language? As if it wasn't bad enough to have a language-tutor program chirping in her ear all the time, reminding her of her mistakes, she always had a clutch of mean-spirited girls at school following her, _waiting_ to see what stupid thing would come out of her mouth.

And now Roll and her father were angry at one another!

A warbling chirp and the sound of clumping footsteps preceded the entry of Eddie into the foyer. As usual, the little 'bot opened its storage compartment up for Bess as soon as it saw her. She deposited her backpack and removed her treat. Today, it was peppermint sticks and a glass bottle of Coke.

"Thanks, Eddie," she said. Though she could not quite manage a smile, she patted the red robot on its head. The snacks had been her idea at first—she had ordered the household 'droid to bring her something to make her feel better one of many days that found her returning from school with tears stinging the corners of her eyes. The robot had not asked what she preferred, but instead had wandered around the house, apparently searching.

Thinking that the robot had been preemptively ordered by her father not to bring her any junk food, she had stormed away in a huff and gotten her own snack. However, as the hour drifted by and the tenacious machine had continued to methodically search the house, curiosity had finally gotten the better of her. She followed him up and down stairs, throughout the house, and finally to her room where—to her surprise—the robot opened her desk drawer and retrieved the vidcard of her mother waving and smiling.

"I have observed that visual contact with this object often produces a facial expression consistent with contentment," the robot's screen had read.

That had been almost five months ago. Since then, whenever she arrived home, Eddie had been nearby to meet her at the front door with a snack and a greeting. Dr. Light, Roll and her father denied having ordered the robot to do so, and _Julie_ never would have given up sulking long enough to notice that her little sister was unhappy.

Bess sucked a peppermint stick and sighed.

"Japanese is a stupid language, Eddie," she groused. "It all sounds the same! And the meanings change if you change your tone of voice—even if the sounds are the same. Who would make up such a stupid language?"

Large, solemn eyes blinked slowly as Eddie appeared to ponder this.

"Collating information from my own database and gathered from the 'Net, I surmise that Japanese as a spoken form of communication was not the invention of any single individual, but rather the result of several centuries' worth of cultural development. Query: why do you perceive it as stupid?"

Bess slouched through the foyer and flopped on the large couch in the centeral sitting room. "I don't know. It just is." Her lower lip threatened to swallow the upper, and she sniffed. "People are jerks. You're the only nice one around here, Eddie."

Eddie stumped over to stand beside his self-appointed charge. "I have observed that you display affection for all the inhabitants of this house at one time or another."

"Yeah, well, you're the only one who ever _does_ anything nice for me."

"Master Rock will doubtless be 'nice' to you when he returns. He and Mistress Roll left on an errand earlier this morning." The word _nice_ blinked cheerily on the text readout.

"Rock's _awake_?" Joy mixed with outrage in her shriek. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" She jumped to her feet. "Wait—and they _left_?"

"I am sure that they mean to return soon. Mistress Roll simply wished to spend some—"A pause of several seconds interrupted the scrolling text. "Quality time with her brother."

Bess stomped her foot. "That's not the point! After six months, you'd think he'd at least wait around to say hello to us!" Her hands had coiled into shaking fists, and she relaxed them. Pink crescents glowered silent recrimination of her temper back from her palm. "I just . . . why can't things be simple again?" Bess sat heavily on the couch. "Holovid on," she snapped.

The corners of the room seemed to grow darker as the holovid lit up. "C'mon," she said, patting the couch next to her, "It's about to start!"

Eddie obediently trundled over to the couch and hopped up onto it, sitting next to her. Bess absently patted him and crunched her peppermint stick. Even if the rest of this day went badly, she wasn't going to miss her favorite show.

_Houston, United States_

"You're kidding." Rock stared blackly at the rack of action figures, video games, posters, and other collectibles. "_Rainbow Warrior Miracle Kid?_ How can this be legal?"

His sister presented all the seeming of outer calmness. "Well, you know your exploits are considered public domain, and Dr. Light _was_ working pretty hard to sell your hero image back during the war. It's not so surprising that a fictionalized version of you would become popular."

The offending display was for Toh-Se Toys and Entertainment, and included merchandise of every conceivable sort centered around the adventures of "Rainbow Warrior Miracle Kid"—who bore a stunning resemblance to Rock himself. Hundreds of action figures—in different color combinations and holding aloft different weapons, Rock noted—bedecked the walls. Inside the booth, a holovid was playing, where the titular character was fighting a robot with large scissors on his head.

"You'll never escape justice, Scissorboy!" the hero cried, leaping into the air. "My Mighty Arm will put you right back in prison!"

"_Mighty Arm?_" Rock choked. "Prison?"

Roll giggled beside him. "You needn't sound so appalled."

"Of _course_ I am!" he growled. "Do you remember how I defeated Achilles?" He leaned close to his twin, glaring into her eyes. "_I decapitated him_. With his own cutter. It wasn't a cheap serial cartoon! He didn't go to jail. _I killed him_."

"Lower your voice," Roll pleaded, glancing back and forth. "Do you want to be recognized?"

A bitter laugh bubbled through Rock's scorn. "I'll just tell them I'm a stand-in for Miracle Kid, here."

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, okay?" Roll sighed. "There's a lot you've missed over the past several months. This was all part of the download from the drone."

"Did Dr. Light approve this?" Rock demanded.

"Don't be stupid," his sister replied tartly. "Of course he didn't. But it's _public domain_. You acted in good faith for the world at large. You had to expect to be idolized." She cocked her head. "You have to admit that it's sort of funny."

His glare was glass-edged. "It's still too soon to be funny. As far as I'm concerned, this—" he hiked a thumb over his shoulder where his cartoon doppelganger duked it out with a clownish Cutman clone, "—happened last week. Remember?"

"What I remember is that we've been trying like mad to make the world forget that one of its heroes tried to murder everybody alive." Roll's response was almost toneless. "For half a year. You've been snoozing. I know this is hard for you, but I can guarantee that it's been hard for us, too." She held up a hand. "Yeah, _we_ weren't out there fighting. _We_ didn't have to deactivate our friends because of the whims of a madman. But we _did_ have to pick up the pieces afterwards."

Rock slowly made a fist, and relaxed it.

"It's Bess's favorite," Roll continued quietly.

"What?"

"The show. This episode, in fact." Roll walked into the booth and picked up a figure of the Rainbow Warrior in its unadorned blue, its 'plasma blaster' held high. "She worships you, Rock. And since you've been out of it, she's contented herself with the show. Especially the one where you beat 'Scissorboy.'"

Anger circuits slowly cooled and winked off. Rock found himself shaking his head. "There's so much we have to fix," he said quietly. "Can we ever undo Wily's damage?"

"No."

The lone syllable was hard, stark. Rock frowned and looked up at his sister.

"No, we can't," she said. "We can fix it as best we're able, but we can never undo it. You know that. And the world will never forget that Robot Masters can be instruments of death to equal the destruction of the third World War. It's our job to remind them that we can be an equal force for healing and protection."

"Don't lecture me," Rock smirked, giving his sister a playful cuff. "I'll try to take this—this ridiculous abomination in as good a humor as I can." He made a pained face. "But can we please get out of here?"

Roll shrugged. "You don't want a shirt?" She held up a yellow T-shirt with Rock's likeness giving a thumbs-up and the logo FIGHT FOR JUSTICE underneath.

"Pass."

"Right. Then we should get to Hoffer's demonstration." Roll's expression mirrored Rock's of moments before. "Then I can have my 'drink' with him and we can get out of here before we cause any more trouble."

_Sennet Robotics Pavilion, Houston_

Mikhael Cossack stood with his arms folded.

"You are, of course, making the joke at my expanse." His consonants growled at the back of his throat, and his ears burned with annoyance.

"Nothing of the sort, doctor," the blond-haired woman said smoothly. "As I see it, this deal can do nothing but benefit both of our companies. We have a broken piece of machinery with rogue tendencies that cannot be safely disposed of by human hands. You have a purpose-built security robot that you are no doubt dying to show off." He smile turned cold. "And LighTech stockholders will be happy to invest in a company that looks towards a profitable future rather than clinging to artifacts from its gruesome past."

_She's lying_. Cossack felt a familiar twinge in his stomach that usually signified trouble from his ulcer. _That, or she is hiding the whole truth._

"I ask again, why you come to me instead of speaking with the official security forces." Cossack struggled to keep his tone non-threatening. "On the way in, I saw plenty of security robots as well as human beings. You could easily have enlisted their aid in an official caprice." He frowned. "That is, capacity."

Something unidentifiable and brittle played over the woman's eyebrows.

_She's afraid of something_, Cossack realized. _There is something here that I am missing._ Her expression—halfway between that of a jackal that has just spotted a limping rabbit and a child who hears something moving underneath the bed—was one with which Cossack had become increasingly familiar each time he passed a mirror. And just like that, a feeling of kinship replaced his suspicious hostility. Here was a woman who—like himself—felt persecuted, or perhaps even tortured by expectation.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Cossack felt with sudden conviction that although this woman's goals were not his own, each of them could benefit from the actions he had already been considering.

_The choice is made, then. Oh, Kalinka, you would be proud to see me so calm._

Ginger hair riffled under a breeze of anxious fingers. "Hmm. I am not good at the subterfuge, but if you speak truly, then it explains a few things." A gravid pause. "This may be, as it is said, 'win-win' scenario, _da_?"

Maria Eve nodded seriously. "That's the only sort of deal I ever make, Dr. Cossack."

_Omnitech Pavilion, Houston_

Double-takes and open stares told Rock that he was recognized once or twice on the way to the Omnitech pavilion, but nobody spoke to him or called out. He kept his gaze firmly fixed forward, and his steps purposeful. Beside him, Roll did the same. He wondered if he might not have had better luck staying incognito if had had bought some sunglasses—large ones.

_Too late now. Maybe next time_.

The scattered attendees thickened into a sizeable crowd as the pavilion grew closer, and Rock murmured polite excuses as he gently worked his way towards the front, Roll close behind. His Core Module buzzed at him not to step on any toes or bang elbows, making his passage as much an exercise in passive deflection or redirection of force as anything else. By the time he reached the first row, he was mentally exhausted from the millions of calculations he had needed to perform just to get here.

_They've got it so easy_, he grumped silently, casting his gaze across the mass of the bumping, jostling audience.

"Well, _that_ was unnecessarily taxing," Roll sighed. "And _you_ were taking _me_ to task for my seat choice earlier."

Rock frowned. "I don't know why . . . I just wanted to be up front."

"Me too," his sister answered. "Ah, forget it. It looks like the demo's about to start."

Onto a large, square stage raised little more than a foot off the ground strode two figures. The first—Hansel Hoffer—carried a mask in the crook of his arm and wore a suit comprising what looked like high-impact sports equipment. He waved to the audience enthusiastically and motioned to his partner.

The second figure was clearly robotic; wasp-waisted with legs that ballooned at the bottom until the feet were twice as large in diameter as the thighs. Its shoulders had been adorned with stiff armor plating that jutted out at a harsh angle, making a V shape when it raised its arms. Its face was covered by a protective mask as well, dominated by a long, pointy beak.

Rock found himself doing a double-take as the robot walked; its perfect economy of movement bespoke a kinetics module at least the equal of his own, if not superior. Moving with a tight, rolling grace that could only be called feline, the robot halted abut halfway across the court and glanced back and forth, its head turning with quicksilver silkiness.

"Wow," Roll murmured beside him.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and robots alike," Hoffer began, smiling broadly. "Welcome to the Omnitech demonstration! My name is Hansel Hoffer, and the bigwigs at corporate HQ thought that instead of another hour of watching high-paid CEO's jabber on, you might like to see some practical application of how Omnitech is helping to lead the way to a safer tomorrow!"

The audience chuckled appreciatively at his speech, clapping when he stopped to draw breath.

He waved the sound away, seemingly embarrassed. "Now, now. I'm a martial artist, not an actor. I'm here to tell you in plain talk—and to show you, more to the point—how Omnitech and its partners are adapting to this new age of robots." He leaned back and forth stretching. "It's no secret that the world at large was threatened by humanoid robots gone berserk last year."

Rock felt himself stiffen, and several members of the audience coughed uncomfortably. "Well, it was bound to be the elephant in the room, wasn't it?" Hoffer's voice tolled across the suddenly quieter hall. "But let's not dwell on it. No martial art is effective by concentrating on the problem—it seeks solutions. And that's what the world needs today, ladies and gentlemen: solutions!"

"I have been working with several companies to help develop this robot you see in front of you—or ones very much like it." Hoffer smiled as the robot bowed. "Now I'm not a science guy, so I won't be able to wow you with all sorts of highly technical talk. But I can tell you this: the best martial artists in the world are people who have made their arts a conditioned response that bypasses the 'thinking' part of the brain."

He held his mask up and said, "Here, catch!" His overhand toss sent the mask in a blurred arc towards a man in a grey suit near the front of the audience. The man gasped and threw his hands up, blocking the mask from striking him, but failing to catch it. The mask clattered to the ground loudly, prompting a few nervous titters that rippled over the assembled watchers. The man turned red and bent over the retrieve the fallen headgear.

"Kind of a jerk move, huh?" Hoffer asked, drawing relieved laughter. "But I did that to demonstrate something—in human beings, unless we've practiced over and over and _over_ again, we need to consciously think about a movement or set of movements before we do them."

Several heads bobbed up and down. Rock narrowed his eyes, beginning to see where this was going. _Autonomic combative programming_.

"Well the same thing is true of robots," Hoffer continued. "Sure, they can do calculations at the speed of light, but something that human babies can do—like walking on two legs—takes a lot of processing power. It takes even more power to do something as complicated as martial arts or hand-to-hand combat."

"But what if we could make a robot that didn't have to 'think' about these things? What if it could just reflexively _do_ them?" He gestured to the robot beside him. "Well then we'd have the Tengu, here!"

Roll's exasperated snort contrasted with Rock's smirk. Another jab at the Japanese-based LighTech, he suspected, although a well-conceived name that even Dr. Light could certainly appreciate, with his love of mythology.

"Mister Hoffer," a woman's voice rang out, strident. Rock was horrified to realize that it was Roll's. "That sounds truly marvelous, but how does that address the point you raised about the dangers posed by the recent Robot War?" She tilted her head. "Wouldn't a robot with reflexive combat abilities pose even _more_ danger?"

Hoffer's smile grew wider. He looked honestly pleased by the question. "I'm so glad you could make it, Miss Sulla," he replied. "And to answer you, I've been told that the reflex-based combat module in these types of robot are linked directly with their 'don't hurt the humans' package. They would lose their combat prowess if they even considered using it to harm a human being."

"So is Omnitech building security robots to defend against other robots?" another woman asked from nearby.

"Partly," Hoffer admitted. "But more importantly, they serve as training partners."

"Training partners?" Now it was Rock who spoke, intrigued. "For what?"

Hoffer reclaimed his mask from the man holding it on the sidelines and placed it on his head. "Why, for the martial art I've been developing since the Robot War. A perfect way to empower human beings who feel threatened by machines—I call it Gearbreaker!" He bowed with a flourish and turned towards the Tengu robot. "Begin!" he barked.

Its movements direct and smooth, the training robot shot forward. Limbs poised for violence, the machine emitted an almost subsonic growl as it advanced. Hoffer's own posture was relaxed, the only visible tension in his calves as he stood ready in accipitrine concentration. The audience collectively held its breath in the heartbeats leading up to the opponents' collision.

Fluid as a stream breaking around a rock, Hansel Hoffer slid to the side and cast his arms out. Rock's own hoplological subroutines recognized elements of aikido and traditional jujistsu in the easy, almost dismissive manner in which the martial artist let his hands drift over the charging robot.

_He's searching for a structural instability_.

Rock wondered idly if any of the rest of the audience could appreciate what was happening here in this sophisticated dance of fractional seconds. His enhanced optics pinpointed the strong yet precise grip Hoffer took on the Tengu 'bot, calculated in such a way as to take advantage of the machine's own momentum and to torque it in a spiraling pattern through to the weakest components.

Just as it seemed that the robot's arm would be wrenched out of its chassis, the Tengu adjusted with effortless grace and kicked itself into a leg sweep. Broad triangular wings snapped out from its back, and it glided underneath Hoffer. Somebody had painted intricate feather designs on the dorsal aspect of the wings to match with the crow's-beak face mask the robot wore.

Instead of tumbling with the robot's leg sweep, Hoffer adjusted his grip and rolled onto the top of the machine, back-to-back. Its arm still imprisoned in his iron grasp, he kicked off the other side. Augmented by his falling body weight, Hoffer choked up on his grip as he descended and concentrated the force of the robot's flight against its axillary assembly.

With a screech of shearing metal, the Tengu's right arm tore out of its socket, and the robot—suddenly unbalanced—corkscrewed in the air. Several people in the audience ducked reflexively as it corrected its flight path. Rather than landing, it extended its remaining arm in a fist and rocketed towards Hoffer.

Still moving, the blond man stretched his free arm out in a questing grip. He let his encumbered arm go limp—still holding the Tengu's detached limb—and went into a strange diagonal roll, powered by the force of the flying robot's momentum as Hoffer momentarily grabbed its passing underside.

The Tengu blasted its reverse jets as it soared over its human opponent, stopping its forward motion dead. It turned with a cocked fist—and Hansel Hoffer came out of his dervish spin, slamming the Tengu's head with borrowed superhuman force and a stolen steel arm. The robot crumpled to the ground with a croak like its namesake and lay still for several seconds. A quiet synthesized voice emanated from within its torso.

"Assigned target areas destroyed. Match complete."

The audience exploded into applause—quickly strangled with surprised gasps as the Tengu impossibly stood despite its massive damage and strode with catlike nonchalance to stand beside its victorious sparring partner. The two bowed to one another—the Tengu's ruin of a head notwithstanding—and the root assumed a cross legged sitting position as Hoffer raised his hands in the air.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause. I want you to know that there was no trick to what I just did: only practice. Any one of you could learn to defend yourselves in such a manner." He removed his mask and flashed a dazzling smile. "Why I'd wager that a decently-equipped neighborhood watch group that studies Gearbreaker would be enough to defend itself against an outbreak of robot violence until the authorities could arrive!"

Thunderous clapping followed his announcement despite his request. Hoffer smiled sheepishly and motioned towards his partner—whose damaged head chassis had already been removed and replaced by a team of scuttling repair 'droids. "He's not in top fighting condition, but Tengu here is ready to provide a personal demonstration with any of our more adventurous folks in the audience of his training programming!"

"No thanks!" Somebody in the back called out, to laughter.

"Oh, he was going all-out with me," Hoffer laughed. "He'll be dialed down to level 1 for you! Come on—somebody has to be up for it!"

"Are you worthy of my challenge?" the robot boomed, making a fist with its good arm and raising it high.

Rock smiled outwardly, but made sure to step a few rows back so as to be out of Hoffer's direct line of vision. His emotional subroutines produced an ambivalent response; both combatants had displayed admirable prowess, but the thought of purpose-built private combat 'bots made him uncomfortable.

Cheers greeted the ascension to the low stage of a brave audience member. Rock signaled Roll via narrowband burst and the two slowly and carefully made their way towards the back of the crowd. Behind them, the man who had just invented a robot-destroying martial art laughed and encouraged his volunteer.

"Halt!"

The monosyllabic imperative was too precise to be human. Rock's aural analysis module recognized overtones in the word specifically designed to provoke an instinctive and immediate reaction from human beings. Indeed, a large clutch of spectators around Rock had already flinched into defensive postures.

"Step aside, citizens," the voice commanded. "There is a security breach. Clear a space!"

Silence smothered the beginnings of nervous chatter as a wide space opened around a humanoid robot striding confidently towards Rock and Roll. Its metallic foot assembly made a harsh clumping noise with each step as it approached. Rock felt his emergency combat routines automatically initialize, his energy reserves primed for autonomic systemic release.

"Hey, I don't want to spoil your arrest," Hoffer's voice rang out, "But would you mind keeping it quiet over there, chief?"

"Silence," the robot replied, its tone utterly dismissive. "I am here to neutralize the security threat known as Unit 1—LighTech Rockman model." Cool green eyes fixed on Rock. "Your recent behavior has demonstrated irregular reasoning and is reason to suspect a software aberration. You will come with me."

Roll pushed in front of her brother. "The hell he will—what is this all about?"

Rock took a deep breath to fuel his microfusion generator—just in case. "Are you part of the official security detail?" Rock asked. "Because I can think of no behavior in which I have engaged that would warrant your attention."

"Negative," the robot responded. "I am Enforcer unit 1, on temporary loan from Sennet Robotics under emergency safety clause number—"

"Waitaminute!" Hansel Hoffer had stepped off the stage and was storming towards the three figures at the center of a slowly expanding ring of tense humanity. "You just hold the phone, Mr. Roboto! You're interrupting my demonstration with your screwup! You've got the wrong guy: this ain't Rockman, it's a human being. His name's Rocky . . ." Authority leached from his tone as spoke, landing squarely on uncertain as he cast his glance at Rock, as if suddenly seeing him for the first time. "Aw, _hell_."

"Hoffer—" Rock held his hands up.

"Dammit!" Hoffer snapped. "Did you just come here to make a fool of me? Is LighTech so threatened by Gearbreaker that they'd send you to undermine my demo?"

"That's not it at all," Roll snapped. "We just came to see the show—_like everybody else_! Rock didn't even want to be recognized. And we didn't do _anything_ to distract from your demonstration, _or_ to deserve an emergency arrest from this—this Enforcer robot."

"Your protest is noted in my arrest log," the Enforcer replied.

"Nobody's getting arrested here," Rock answered, his voice relaxed. "Let's all just calm down. I'll leave so that Mr. Hoffer can continue his demonstration without further interruption, and you can tell me exactly what you think I've done in order to be classified a security threat by your programming."

"Oh, like _hell_!" Roll snarled. "This is ridiculous—we're not going anywhere with this thing. Rock, this is just a publicity stunt by Sennet. Don't you get it? Sennet is sending its new security 'bot over here to steal thunder from Hoffer's show and to get us out from underfoot so that its slipshod tech looks better by comparison!"

Audible gasps from the audience accompanied Roll's announcement.

Hoffer placed himself between Roll and the Enforcer. "Stay out of this," he said quietly but urgently to Roll. "I mean it. You could get hurt, Miss Sulla."

Roll's telltale shudder snagged the corner of Rock's peripheral vision. Her facial expression spasmed between rage and helplessness, but her shoulders slumped and she took a step back.

"My _hero_." Just shy of venomous, Roll's voice lanced from behind Rock. "Mister Hoffer, I don't need your overdeveloped sense of chivalry impeding—"

"Shush, please. We'll discuss this later." Hoffer's words had lost their customary jovial delivery.

That's_ going to cause some troubling complications,_ Rock decided. _Ah, well. Time to deal with that later._

An iron hand gripped Rock's wrist. "You will accompany me, or I will disable you all and take you to the security wing."

_All of us_? _He'd hurt a human?_ The prime module snarled an imperative, and Rock felt his energy reserves dump into his kinetic operations circuits. "That would be very unwise," he replied quietly. "I will accompany you, but you will leave these two alone."

"There, he said he'll go," Hoffer huffed. "Now lay off." He reached out and popped the Enforcer's hold free of Rock's wrist.

The rest of it happened too quickly—and too slowly. The Enforcer's hand darted out instead to seize Hoffer's extended limb. The martial artist's hand had already begun to supinate in a modified catch-wrestling posture. Goaded by his defensive directive, Rock kicked off the ground and tackled the blue-and-gold robot.

Too late, he noticed the robot's permanent plasma buster. The crowd had completely encircled the combatants, leaving Rock no safe place to redirect any anticipated projectiles. With a grimace, he turned the buster towards himself, acutely aware that he wore no armor.

Hoffer had pushed Roll further back, his shadow already darkening the knot of steel comprising Rock and the Enforcer. The ground rushed up to meet them, and Rock furiously tried to calculate a way to disable this robot without permanently damaging it.

"Tengu!" Hoffer's voice summoned the prototype training 'droid as the Enforcer hit the ground, its arm cannon pressed firmly against Rock's chest. Its eyes flashed with triumph. Rock risked a quick upward glance to see if he might direct his enemy's plasma blast up and into the ceiling.

_Glass. Of course._ His prime module already growled a warning, projecting the possibility of dozens of bystanders injured by falling shards of shattered glass.

Heat blossomed in his thoracic chassis, and Rock felt himself launched backwards. The typical hissing chirp that accompanied the release of a controlled plasma burst was overlaid with another sound—a sort of muffled, descending glissando as the air closed around the jagged wake left by the Enforcer's glowing energy bullets.

Rock kicked his left foot out behind him to try to compensate, his arms swinging in a complete circle. His heads-up display had already been half-filled with a transparency indicating the status of his variable weapons system. Adaptive heuristics and hoplologistic input algorithms clamored insistently for more data as Rock landed in a balanced position, his hands clenched into loose fists.

Wavy straw-colored hair in disarray, Hansel Hoffer leaped into the fray. His open hands had twisted into an "accepting" position common to many grappling arts as he grasped the Enforcer's cannon and twisted it towards the floor. His body weight dropped, ready to turn the maneuver into a throw.

Roll's shout echoed wordlessly in the _de facto_ arena, accompanied by a discordant chorus of human alarm from the annulet of organic panic that writhed around the struggle. The Enforcer turned with the coming throw and thrust a fist forwards towards Hoffer's solar plexus. Rock's right arm snapped up, braced by his left.

"Stop!" he shouted as Hoffer tumbled backwards, his throw aborted by the need to deflect the Enforcer's punch. The shadow of the Tengu flitted over Rock's head as it streaked towards Sennet's security 'bot, its arms outstretched for a flying punch.

The Enforcer dropped to one knee and the crystal bulb on its head flashed brilliantly.

Rock had a brief impression of a blur where the robot had been, and suddenly he was rocking forward in an uncontrolled fall as his dorsal nociceptors registered multiple plasma impacts against his spinal shielding chassis. Kinetic overload from the blasts had shorted out the primary spinal pathways from his central computing unit to his left leg. He scrabbled for purchase on the floor, unable to force his legs to support him.

To the side, Hoffer vomited, clutching his abdomen. The Tengu skirled momentarily out of control, its ventral torso plating peppered with half a dozen scorch marks.

_Where is he?_ Rock made a clumsy half-circle as he tried to locate the Enforcer.

Standing directly behind Rock, the robot held its plasma cannon outflung, aimed at the android's head.

"Stand down," it commanded. "You will be taken into custody and processed, or I will deactivate you."

"What's wrong with Mr. Hoffer?" Rock gestured towards the martial artist.

"I struck him lightly in several key locations across his anatomy. He is momentarily disabled but not permanently injured." Indifferent, the robot continued. "If he attempts to resist again—"

The Tengu slammed into the Enforcer from behind, tumbling it forward onto Rock. The security bot's eyes widened in a surprisingly human expression, and the crystal assembly atop its head gleamed.

This time, Rock saw it.

Diverting extra energy to his optical sensors, he was able to trace the Enforcer's movements. Although the rest of the world—including Rock himself—had slowed to a maddening rate of movement like the languid drip of chilled sap, the Enforcer zipped back and forth. At first, Rock thought the other robot used some sort of close-range teleport, but soon realized that the Enforcer's jerky movements were a result of his own internal visual processor's inability to stream information quickly enough.

Darting back and forth, the armored robot judiciously pressed its plasma buster against the Tengu's face plating and its torso. Several small bursts of light followed these motions—the release of low-level plasma bursts, Rock assumed.

Rock couldn't move his eyes or his limbs. His own internal commands, conducted through nanocircuitry at the speed of light, seemed to be impossibly slow, as if he were trying to force the current through a gauntlet of resistors and capacitors.

And just like that, he was falling backward the rest of the way. His calculations finished with their normal alacrity, and his emergency spinal accessory pathways took up the slack for his damaged circuitry. Data from his moments of frozen observation filled the gap in his adaptive combat program, and a Rolling Cutter formed in his hand.

_Five seconds. It should take him five seconds to recharge._

"Hey!" Rock's cry made the Enforcer turn.

_Four seconds_. The Rolling Cutter had left his hand, and a second was halfway formed. The Enforcer began to duck. Rock had already begun to charge forward.

_Three seconds_. The circular blades snick-snicked through the air, inches away from the Enforcer's squatting form. Something glittered at the base of the crystal bulb. Three strides still separated Rock from the Enforcer. The Tengu trailed smoke as it scissor-kicked its legs in an attempt to regain control.

_Two seconds_. The first blade had gouged the left side of the massive cabochon atop the security 'bot's cranial region. Rock was within half a stride of being able to reach his foe. The Enforcer gritted its teeth as if trying to speed whatever reaction took place in its outsize flash-bulb. Rock couldn't see the Tengu.

_One second_. The second Rolling Cutter now slashed deeply into the Enforcer's right side, severing circuitry. The first completed its boomerang-flight and struck a glancing blow to the back of the blue robot's helmet. Rock locked his left arm in a death grip around the Enforcer's cannon, immobilizing it. A blur of crimson and silver from above signaled the murderous approach of the Tengu.

The Enforcer's crystal helmet flashed again. Instead of freezing his opponents in place, however, the Enforcer was driven to his knees as glaring actinic bolt arced from the firefly-like gleam at the center of the crystal to the furrow left by Rock's first Rolling Cutter. A tiny explosion popped somewhere within the robot's head, distending its right temple as it toppled to the ground.

Rock knelt atop his fallen opponent, a third half-moon blade upraised. He took two, three ragged breaths as Hoffer's hoarse shouted command for the Tengu to stand back pierced the alarmed babble of the gathered crowd. Roll's quick footsteps approached.

Rock made a show of standing up and limping towards Hoffer, his hand outstretched. The martial artist accepted the handshake with a wry smirk.

"Thanks," Rock said, loud enough for the audience to hear. "We would have been in a tight spot without you. I guess that Gearbreaker stuff really works. If you hadn't grappled it when you did, we'd have all been sporting a few extra holes."

Hoffer's smile was genuine and open, marred only by his wince as he tried to straighten all the way up. "Well, it didn't last long, but it was a heck of a fight." He turned towards his training-partner 'bot. "Right, old boy?"

The Tengu turned its ruined face mask up in an affectation of disdain. "Regrettable."

Rock took a last shuddering breath as his auto-repair systems began the laborious work of rerouting and restoring normal conduction through his spinal relays. Out of the corner of his eye, he could already spot a wedge of approaching forms whose deliberate, hasty steps marked them as reporters as surely as the flock of mediabots hovering at their shoulders.

"Say something clever," Roll ordered as she drew level with Rock and helped to support Hoffer. "There are a lot of kids like Bess out there who believe you're a superhero, and this isn't the time to disillusion them."

Rock gritted his teeth, but turned towards the reporters, each clamoring for a sound bite or a vid clip.

"Fight for justice," he smirked.

_Sidelines of Omnitech Pavilion, Houston_

Yoshi Inafune turned towards his companion.

"How about that, Lotto? Dinner and a show—although not in the order I usually prefer." He took a hesitating step towards the center of the improvised combat arena, already flooding with other spectators, newsbots and human security and medical personnel.

Christer Andersson shrugged. "This is indeed impressive. This Hansel Hoffer has done a great deal of work for the betterment of humanity." His brows knitted and his cheeks pinked. "Do you know, Shogun, I think we might make use of his services in this philanthropy I have in mind."

Inafune smiled and gestured back in the direction of the restaurant. "Well, by all means, let us discuss this over dinner. I must remember to send a message to LighTech as well and inform them of how impressed I was at Rockman's performance today."

He waited a moment as Lotto tore his gaze away from the blond man in the middle of the cluster of reporters, holding his ribs and answering questions enthusiastically. After another half moment, he coughed politely and began to walk towards the restaurant.

Behind him, Christer took a deep breath and said, "This is an important night, my friend. I feel as if I have just solved a riddle that has plagued me for months."

_Palma, Spain_

Silence followed Dr. Wily's unyielding proclamation.

The shadows in the corner shuffled restlessly, and Wily batted a distracted hand in their direction. Things had become less substantial over the past few minutes; when Tom had walked in, everything had been so _clear_.

Something important. There was something vitally important he needed to tell Tom, and he had gotten sidetracked. Again. Panic scrabbled at the back of his mind. He could not afford to lose this chance to make things right, and if he waited too long, his words would become a jumbled nonsense again.

"Tom," he said, in as reasonable a tone of voice as he could muster through the fractures in his self-control. "I have something. Important." He swallowed and gritted his teeth in frustration. "Important to say."

"Go ahead, Will." Light's eyes had turned a nettling, unsettling shade of electric blue. Their compassion and their piercing incision made Wily at once ashamed and resentful. How _dare_ Light pity him!

_No. Concentrate._

"Clues." Wily said. "Clues must give." Rage boiled as his tongue betrayed him, and his hands knotted into age-spotted fists. "_Verdamt. _I mean to say Blues."

Tom's gaze became needle-sharp. Wily could feel it probing in his brain. "What? _Blues_?"

"Drive." _That's not right, either_. Think, _you doddering fool!_ Images crowded upon themselves, a thrashing collage of confusion, shot through with scintillant clarity here and there. An open access port. Glaring hawk-eyes. A solution—brilliant and unexpected. Wires and coolant and microsurgery with a hundred different dirty blackened tools underneath a mountain guarded by an outsize skull.

Alive.

"You see?" Wily gestured helplessly at his inability to make his recollections manifest in speech. "Alive."

"Will," Dr. Light pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in the chair—_Wily's_ chair. "I'm sorry. I don't understand. I know you can't help it."

"Don't pity me!" Wily's fulminating roar echoed from the spaces in his own head and he nearly flinched from the force of his fury.

His face was hot; he took a deep breath. "Don't you _dare_ pity me, Tom. I have knowledge that could ruin you—ruin _all_ of you. You are in no position— " He stopped. "No. No time. I wanted to say to you: Blues is alive."

"_What_?" Light was already shaking his head. "How could you know that?"

"I remember," Wily replied. "Light. Ripping. The sound of water. He was gone. _I_ was gone. But I also remember darkness. Rumbling. The silence of stone. I fixed him. I _understand_, Tom."

Incredulous cerulean eyes fixed a level gaze on the German roboticist.

_He doesn't believe you_, the nearest shadow chuckled. _You're a madman, remember?_

Wily's shattered sigh shook his frame, suddenly frail-feeling.

"You don't believe me." _Fool._ "You think it's the madness." _Proud fool._

"It's difficult," Light replied. "Jesus, _listen_ to you, Will! When your words make sense, you only sound like yourself half the time! The other half, you're this . . . this cold, angry stranger."

"And what else should I be?" Wily snarled. "For half a year I've been drowning in a fog of memory and hatred and halioperidol. What do you _suppose_ that does to a man? We've been over this, Tom. We've been over this far too much." A sigh. "But I understand it now, Tom. Why you were so distant. Why you shut me out after the accident. Why you were such a moody son of a bitch. I've lost my son, Tom. _You must hear this_. Vitally important."

"Your son?" Light's jaw worked like a gasping trout's. "You had a son?"

"_My son_, Tom. He was broken and glorious and pathetic. But he was mine. And I let him die in my madness." _A greater loss than all the lives my robots took._ "Never told you. Never had a chance until now. But I _felt_ it, Tom. He died under my mountain. And having felt that loss, I'm _glad_ I fixed Blues."

Doubt rested heavy in Light's eyes, underscored by the quizzical angle of his dark eyebrows.

Wily made a fist. "This isn't a stranger talking to you. Pay attention. I'm still me. Maybe it's just easier for you to see who I've always been now that I've acted on my convictions."

"That's not true. You always had a . . . harshness to you, Will. We both know that. But you were never like this." Tom's mouth twisted into a combination of a frown and a sigh. "And I don't think I'm helping here. I'm sorry."

His children had begun to whisper to each other in the corner, and Wily shook his head. "All right, never mind. We'll speak again. I've made it clear that I refuse to tell them anything until I've at least had a few visits with you, Tom."

Light stood up to leave, and Wily caught his hand.

"You're not leaving without hearing one last thing, Tom."

Light arched an eyebrow, but said nothing. Wily took a deep breath. _This is it—there's no going back after I truly make this decision. _He steeled his resolve and looked directly into his old partner's frank gaze.

"Don't worry about the trial, Tom. Don't worry about the bureaucrats. Don't worry about the future. I've got it handled. _I'll save you_."

Wily watched his friend leave, the tension buzzing in his ears. He couldn't be sure that Light wasn't weeping as he left, the sentimental old fool. His own tears were cold on his face.

"I'll save you, Tom," he repeated in a whisper.


	8. Chapter 6: Schism

"_Something that none of us took into account before the war was the effect that all of our little disagreements had upon the health of our relationship with Repliforce as a whole. Though they seemed small enough singly and separate, altogether they added up to an irreconcilable difference of ethics and principle: a schism that pitted two entities that should have been allies against one another while the puppeteer laughed._"

-excerpt from Commander Signas' personal log

**Chapter 6**

**Schism**

The smooth progress of the hypersonic jet did little to calm Thomas Light's nerves.

Though he doubted Wily's claim, it could not be dismissed outright. What if the German robotologist _had_ found a way—in his delirious state—to correct the fatal flaw in Blues' power transfer coils? How would Blues have found his way to Wily's fortress to begin with? Why wouldn't he have simply come home, if he still lived? Had Wily abducted him, forced him to take part in the revolt like so many other of Light's creations?

Doubts and sorrow two years buried now percolated through his earthen self-control. A nightmare pastiche of images blurred his carefully-ordered thoughts on the way back to Geneva. His nanophone implant squawked with a dozen messages—half of them from Peter Cheever with alarmist babble about General Mears.

Light's jaw ached with the clenching of his teeth. Yesterday, he would have dismissed the general's fears of a second Robot War out of hand; now the words seemed oddly prophetic. Blues loose in the world—damaged and clearly unstable as evidenced by the video feed the general had revealed—was a frightening enough proposition. Blues somehow armed with a plasma buster and reprogrammed by Dr. Wily during the Robot War bordered on apocalyptic.

A second Robot War with Blues as Dr. Wily's unwitting pawn . . . the concept wrenched Light's heart with unforgiving cruelty. Worse, Rock was still asleep in Tokyo, and Roll's increasing emotional instability made her an unlikely candidate for a robotic huntress. _Not without wiping her memory banks clean and starting fresh_.

_That_ raised ghosts Light would as soon leave smothered under the soil of grateful oblivion. _Never again_.

What recourse, then?

_The double_.

Light nearly chuckled aloud at the obvious solution. The drone had been constructed from Rock's basic schematic. Although it would be labor-intensive to install combative subroutines in it, and to transfer Rock's variable weapons system, the work would be less than building another robot hunter from scratch.

_Simple. Why didn't I think of it before?_ Rock would be happy when he awoke; he had made it plain that he hated his role as hunter—who wouldn't? The new robot would be just that—a robot, with no emotional subroutines. Bare need had driven the use of an android with a simulacrum of human emotion as a killer before; Light would avoid that mistake this time.

With the Core Module safely in place and no emotive responses or ego to mire its performance or torture it to the brink of insanity, this new robotic hunter would be . . .

_A perfect killing machine_.

The gears of Light's thoughts ground to an abrupt halt; his incipient chuckle died stillborn on his lips. His thought experiment had suddenly yielded a far more dangerous threat than that for which General Mears strove. His fingers gnawed at his scalp, distressing snowy locks in their passage.

Would he dare to inflict the fate of sentient weapon upon a second of his creations? No matter that the framework for its programming would be simpler, the risk for damage would still exist. Worse, what if Mears' drive to acquire the Rockman O/S and hardware schematics yielded fruit? The new robot Light had already half-constructed in his head would _also _certainly be subject to the rapacious machinations of that short-sighted warmonger.

_No_. Better to wait until this trial had been resolved. A painful lump had clawed its way up Light's gorge and settled midway between his sternum and his jaw. His eyes stung. _No_. Even if it meant forcefully awakening Rock from his mysterious stasis to send against his maddened brother, Light would not build a machine for the purpose of war.

_How will I explain that to him if the time comes?_

A low hum invaded the mellow timbre of the jet's engines as it prepared to slow for landing. Feeling far older than his physical body, Thomas Light took a deep breath in through his nose and blew the air out his mouth. The linguist at the back of his mind noted the glottal stutter of the sound, fading into a lazy fricative.

_Time to focus on the trial instead_. A part of his brain immediately tackled the chore of dissecting the uncomfortable interview with his erstwhile partner, seeking ways to turn the information he had discovered against his attackers in court. A cold, logical voice suggested that he might shift all of the blame for Blues' recent appearance on to Will, since the German robotologist was now his prototype android's last known contact point. His conscience shouted down the insidious suggestion, but he could not entirely dismiss it from his mind.

_Oh, Blues. How can I protect you from what they want to do to you—or even your memory—if I don't even know where you are?_ Are _you Wily's pawn now? What has he done to you?_ Maudlin, all of it. Light swallowed past the offending lump and focused.

_I can protect Rock._ He hadn't discharged weapons on international soil for a long time—well past the statute of limitations required by general convention. If he could prove that the robot in the holovid was Blues and not his younger sibling, then Rock would be safe. Light would need only worry about his own fate and that of Blues.

A tension he had not realized perched behind his eyes now eased a bit.

For the first time in months, Dr. Light was glad that Rock was safely asleep, and not complicating matters for himself.

_Houston, United States_

"Well, this complicates everything," Hansel Hoffer said, as he raised a half glass of scotch to his lips and cast a sidelong glance at Roll. "Your buddy Rockman there sure did take me for a ride, but I guess he didn't mean any harm. And now that he saved my skin, it'll look like I'm just having a drink with you because I'm grateful for it."

Roll re-activated the behavioral subroutine flagged as "patience" and tucked a stray strand of gold behind her left ear. "Hoffer, anybody who saw you order _helpless little me_ out of the way at the demo will naturally assume that your overactive, archaic sense of chivalry is the explanation for your buying me a drink." Roll glanced worriedly over her shoulder.

"Afraid of leaving your robo-boyfriend alone with the press?" Hoffer half-chuckled. "I'd think he'd be used to handling them by now."

"You'd be surprised," Roll replied dully.

Hoffer shook his head, and his chuckle turned into a rueful laugh. "If I got half as much press as 'Rocky,' back there, I'd be a rich man and every person on the planet would be a firm believer in Gearbreaker."

Roll made a show of swishing her drink around in the glass. "Maybe you should worry more about the application to which you can safely put your new art for the good of humanity rather than its marketing applications."

Hoffer's face jerked in an offended micro-expression; few without such mechanical precision of perception would have noticed. Roll immediately wished she had found a less waspish way to say it, and then wondered why she cared. _Just my sapient affinity subroutine at work_, she assured herself.

As Hoffer opened his mouth to protest, Roll interrupted. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it that way. It sounded critical. I just meant that in my experience working with LighTech, we focus on the product first. Marketing is almost an afterthought."

The martial artist scowled. "You should tell your senior executive Miss Eve about that approach. She seemed pretty focused on the 'afterthought.' _Lighting the way to a better future through technology_, and all that. Hey, are you all right?"

This time, it came with a white noise burst and a keening jolt stabbing at her internal nociceptors with the vicious subtlety of an icepick. Disconnected from her voluntary response module, she dispassionately catalogued her own body's response as clinically as if she had been recording data for any other psuedobehavioral experiment.

The episode lasted less than a full second; an eternity for a brain conscious of its own operation in measurements of nanoseconds. As soon as she had regained—or been _given_—control, she activated her smile subroutine. "I'm fine. Maria Eve and I do not see eye to eye on certain matters."

A snort was Hoffer's reply. "Yeah, I guess. By your expression, I'd say it's the same way I don't see eye to eye with getting punched in the face."

Tracing the rim of her glass with her fingertip and taking note of the harmonic rasp inaudible to human ears, Roll blinked. "If you don't like getting punched, martial arts seems like a strange field for you to have chosen."

"Not at all." Roll noticed that Hoffer's hands gestured with remarkable economy of movement when he spoke, never straying far from within six inches of the center line of his torso. "It's just because I _don't_ want to get punched in the face that I took up martial arts as a kid."

"It has been my observation that parents often insist upon their progeny's study of a martial art, whether the child wills it or no," Roll said.

"'Progeny?' You spend too much time in the lab with robots, Miss Sulla." Hoffer began to chuckle, caught himself short and grimaced as doing so pulled against battered muscles. "Aaaah. That smarts. Maybe I should take it easy for the next few days."

"That would be wise," Roll agreed. Her internal chronometer indicated that she had been sitting with Hoffer for five minutes already. Surely her obligation to continue with this charade must now be ended. Still, she did not wish to seem rude. "You decided to practice on your own, then? Either you must have been possessed of remarkable discipline at a young age, or you were emulating a popular media icon. Am I right, Mister Hoffer?"

"Right on both counts, actually." His fingers twitched, and he began to drum them upon the table. "And for the love of Pete, call me Hans, willya? There was a show on the holovid when I was a kid, I can't remember the name of it now, but it had this guy who was a Master Fighter—that was what he called himself in the show—and he knew every martial art in the world. All the kids in school wanted to be like him. At least, all the kids I paid attention to. Once I'd made up my mind, nothing got in my way."

Roll did a quick Network search in her head. "_The Fist with No Name_?" she said aloud.

Hoffer beamed. "_That's_ the one! I can't believe you remember it! Yeah, so I've been studying with everybody I can meet ever since. A while back, I thought, 'Every martial art in the world was made up by some guy at one point, so why don't I try making my own? Then the Robot War happened, and it was like a light went on in my head. I knew the martial art the world needed in this day and age."

Grudgingly impressed, Roll nodded. "Admirable. I'm sorry to cut this short Hans, but I really must go if I'm to catch my flight."

"Ah, go on," the martial artist said glumly. "I see you haven't even touched your drink. Maybe we'll meet again some time, huh?"

"Count on it," Roll found herself saying.

The surprised pause filled several moments. Hoffer was the first to break it, his face lighting up. "Yeah? Great! Okay, great! Well, I guess Mr. Bourbon and I will just sit here and nurse my bruises while you collect your hero-bot over there. Have a safe flight, Miss Sulla!"

Roll nodded silently and turned away as she rose. She had no doubt that Hansel Hoffer would not lack for company today: reporters and admirers eager for either a story or a brush with celebrity. Even now, an excited-looking albino in a very good suit and a Japanese businessman strode purposefully towards the table she had just vacated.

Now to analyze here own actions and responses from the past several hours.

_What is wrong with me?_

_Tokyo, Japan_

"Doorbell, Eddie!" Julie's voice floated down the stairs from her bedroom.

Bess paused the holovid. She'd been thrilled to discover that today's program was a special double-header. After her favorite episode, a new one had aired. Halfway through, the stupid doorbell started ringing. Eddie had already begun to kick his little legs in order to dislodge himself from the deep indent his cylindrical metal body had made in the soft brocade fabric of the couch cushions.

"I'll come with you," Bess announced. "Then we can both watch the rest in a minute, okay?"

"O-K Miss Angelwood," Eddie's display read.

She walked beside Eddie as he stumped towards the front door, both deftly navigating the veritable obstacle course of shoes, backpack, datapad, and jacket left by Julie as she had entered the house. The pair split around Julie's backpack. As they joined up again, Bess absently muttered, "Bread and butter."

An interrogatory beep made her turn her head.

"I shall procure some bread and butter for you after this task, Miss Angelwood."

Bess broke into a grin as she read the message. "No, I don't want—it's just an expression, Eddie." Taking the little 'bot's textual silence for confusion, she continued. "Something Mom used to say. I guess it means that when we are together, we're like bread and butter. Get it?"

She thumb-keyed the door open, and found herself facing a tall, dark-haired Japanese woman in rumpled grey-green cargo pants and an orange thermal undershirt, capped with a dirty white safety helmet. _She looks bored. _The woman said something in Japanese, and Bess struggled to make sense of the sounds.

By the time she had worked out that the woman was asking for her father, Eddie had already displayed a stream of barely decipherable syllabary on his screen in reply, and the woman had held out a datacard scancode for Eddie to verify. A quick sweep of the tracking laser beneath his cartoonish eyes resulted in a half-musical series of beeps, and Eddie's top hatch popped open, a bubble-like hologram appearing above it.

"Hi, Dad!" Bess blurted, as Snap's ghostly image materialized in the air.

"Hi, sweetie," he replied, and then turned to the bored-looking woman. Bess caught about every other word the two exchanged, though her father's slower, more stilted take on Japanese was easier for Bess to follow than the drawling, accented vernacular in which the visitor spoke.

Halfway through the conversation, a rock dropped into her gut. They were talking about moving out—the woman worked for the packing and transport company, and was here for a group of boxes. Her dad said they were upstairs in his room, and that Bess could take the woman there if she needed.

They would be moving out in the next two days.

_No, no, no. It's not fair!_ What would her life be like without the Lights? Roll was patient and smart, and helped Bess with her homework when her dad wasn't home yet. Dr. Light would let Bess help put robots together in the lab if she asked, and sometimes let her have a hot chocolate or play a hologame, even after her bedtime. And Eddie . . .

_Trapped. Trapped alone in a country that speaks confusing nonsense._

"It's just not fair!" she shouted, and bolted up to her room, leaving a bewildered mover and a blinking red robot on the doorstep.

_Unknown_

Quint stamped the blood from his boots.

It would have troubled him once, this act. _His _act. Something told him that deep within, some mangled, cringing thing at the core of his personality would never have countenanced it. The screams, the acrid, sour smell of burnt muscular and connective tissue, and the crunch of bone beneath his feet would once have filled him with horror.

Of course, that was _before_. Before _what_, he could not have said. However, over the past several days, his journey had begun to stir memories in him. Vague, half-developed shapes, sounds, and thoughts scrabbled just beneath the surface of corrupted data. Of one thing he was certain—he had broken something. Something important. And beyond expectation, he had survived.

A bright flame of righteousness burning within, he strode through the blasted shells of cities and homes, throttling the taint of corruption. He had been assailed by robots, by automated defense networks, and even by a few advanced android-like machines that moved with superhuman speed and strength, whose underlying structure was steel and silicon, but who bled and begged like organics.

And, of course, the humans.

This group had been a poorly-armed and hastily-assembled home defense force. Laser-reflective armor patches lay scattered in bloodstained disarray alongside more traditional ballistic-proof vests. Gore and death coated the ground. Quint had been efficient and merciless. After all, the trail of destruction he had followed from the hill on which he awoke led straight through this area. If these men and women had not been responsible for or even complicit in the slaughter that Quint felt driven to avenge, then they were at least hindrances to his cause.

And justice must be served.

The noises they made when they died were not entirely unlike the vocal feedback loop sometimes triggered in the more humanoid robots during catastrophic system failure. That lonely, frail voice buried under broken code and awash in a sea of inaccessible data had keened as he destroyed the human militants, but what of it? His purpose was absolute, and he must not be denied.

The Brotherhood of the Blade had been fleeing before his advance for hours, now. Composed of perhaps fifty or sixty remaining robots, the motley band of so-called freedom fighters—Quint would say terrorists—had laid ambushes, set traps, and even left messages suing for peace in the shrill binary of hapless reprogrammed metools. Since destroying their scouting party, Quint had come to truly despise the wretched outmodes.

The newer models troubled him, though. He could not say why. Again, the carious firewall frustrated his attempts to fathom his own motivations. Oblivion rushed at him from all sides each time he tried to focus, to force his way through the blankness walling him in. He ground his teeth in frustration, only to wonder where he had acquired such a useless human habit. The ones that looked more human and less robotic—like himself, but moreso—he had taken a savage delight in defeating them. It made him wonder why he hated them so.

_They betrayed us_. The thought came so sudden an unbidden that he knew it came from the firewall. He grasped it greedily, as if it were the last amperage available to him in a total power blackout. _They _betrayed_ us_. Something _clicked_, and a comfortable feeling of order settled upon him. It was so obvious—humans had betrayed him, and those he swore to protect.

He brushed something floppy and bloody from the pointed crest on his helmet, flipped his visor back down, and walked, step by step, towards justice.

_Houston, United States_

Christer's heart leaped as he recognized the woman—or rather, the android—standing up from the table. The Sons of Light had gathered extensive intelligence regarding the personal habits and disposition of wealth of their unknowing patriarch, but until today's display by Rockman, the albino had never seen one of Thomas Light's masterworks in person. Letting Inafune take the lead for a moment, he activated his nanonet implant and sent an encrypted order to one of his undercover operatives in the area to take note of the female android's movements.

That task finished, he caught up with his longtime friend. Shogun's measured step had taken him to the table where the bruised but victorious martial artist nursed a half-full glass of something amber-colored. The bow he gave was respectful but not terribly deep. Christer restrained a smile—he had never been able to truly understand the nuance of Japanese etiquette, so he had simply always made it a point to bow just a shade shallower than anyone from Japan that he met and left it at that.

By contrast, the American—Hoffer, if Christer remembered correctly—seemed quite at home with the formality, and stood to respond in kind. Christer let the two finish the elaborate show of exchanging business holos via pantomime that would activate their nanonet catalogue programs. He silently noted that winning this man to their cause—and he had no doubt that it would be _their_ cause once Christer sugarcoated it enough—would be easier knowing that he had already elected to have a nanochip implanted.

"Good evening, friend," he said, holding out his hand to shake. "I am Christer Andersson, and I represent a charitable foundation for the betterment of humanity. You have already met my good friend and business associate, Mr. Yoshi Inafune."

"I'll say I have," the man returned in accented English. "It's an honor to meet you both. Can I offer ya a drink?"

"Please," Christer waved away the offer with his good hand. "We should be buying for _you_. I see you already have a drink, but perhaps we could get you dinner? I have a proposal for you that would benefit all of us, I think."

Hoffer's scarred hand smoothed back wavy blond hair. "Please have a seat, gentlemen. If I can spread the word about Gearbreaker for the—how'd ya put it? 'The betterment of humanity—then I'd say I'm obligated. Are you from the X Foundation?"

"I'm afraid not," Christer said. "Are you familiar with LighTech's corporate motto?"

Hoffer's face dropped into something of a chagrined smirk. "You could say that. _Lighting the way to a better future through technology_, or something, right?"

"Indeed. We have a similar goal, and since Dr. Light has been such a generous benefactor to humanity, we call ourselves the Sons of Light."

"Dramatic," Hoffer said diplomatically. The three of them made small talk for a few minutes while Christer flagged down a wait-bot and each placed their orders. Repeating each request in stiff but flawless diction, the small green disc-shaped bot hovered around for another moment, waiting for the oft-added "Oh, and . . ." before humming away to the distant kitchens.

_And now we come to it_.

"Gentlemen," Christer began, his cheeks warming with excitement. "It is no secret that the recent Robot War was a great shock to humanity and the world. I do not say that it was as catastrophic an event as the last War, however . . ." he let the thought finish itself silently in their minds before continuing. "Mister Hoffer, you said that you developed this Gearbreaker art for the purpose of empowering people who felt helpless after the troubles."

"That's right." Hans flexed his fingers around his mostly empty glass. "And even though I got pounded back there by . . . whatever that was, even Rockman said it was a big help." He smiled lopsidedly. "'Course, that might've been just charitable talk, if robots are even capable of that. But I hold to what I said."

"So, then," Christer folded his hands on the table. "Do you feel that humans should destroy robots? Wipe them out to reduce our dependency upon them as a species? Is that how you see Gearbreaker developing?"

Inafune sat a little straighter—the Japanese version of an offended gasp. Hoffer performed the American version of an offended gasp—an offended gasp.

"Now just a damn minute! Didn't ya hear what I said about working _together_ with the Omnitech folks to develop training 'droids? Didn't you see me shaking hands with Dr. Light's freakin' miracle 'bot?" Hoffer's brows drew down dangerously. "Mr. Andersson, if you're here to advance that Human Supremacy drivel, you can just march back to wherever you came from."

"Lay your fears to rest," Christer smiled. He knew the expression disconcerted those not used to his pale face and hair. "I simply needed to hear you say so before I continued. I feel then that I can say with certainty that we at this table wish to neither live in a world enslaved by robots, nor to destroy them utterly. Am I correct?"

"Certainly," Inafune answered. The first words he had spoken since introducing himself to Hansel Hoffer. _Ah, my friend—ever playing your cards close to the chest._

"You got that right," the martial artist added.

"Good. I have recently begun to establish an organization. It is a volunteer affair, and a charitable foundation as well. Its goal is to encourage a world in which humans and robots can live together—not as rivals or as master and servant—but as partners." He pulled his glove from his good hand and brandished it before him.

Inafune raised his eyebrow a fraction of an inch and said, "Ah."

Hoffer tilted his head slightly. "Now that's a fancy piece of work, Mister Andersson." He nodded appreciatively. "Looks every bit as advanced as the stuff Omnitech was doing. Is it a custom job?"

"But of course." Christer smiled. "In fact, I put it together myself, with help from a few experts. And here is where my story begins. As you may have guessed, I was injured in the recent troubles—and not by robots. I was injured by people of my own town who were so terrified of the insurrection that they gave in to their baser, more primal instincts. Anger and persecution ran rampant, and when I refused to deactivate my personal household 'droid—a LighTech model I'd had for years—they beat me and left me for dead."

"Lotto." It was a barely whispered word, but had all of Inafune's compassion behind it. _Good. Let them feel pity, if that is what it takes_. "You should have told me."

"Could you have returned my hand?" Christer shot back. "I lost it to compartment syndrome and infection after lying underneath the wreckage of my apartment for a day until rescue-bots cleared it away."

"That's rough," Hoffer said, downing a swig of scotch. "And there's plenty who suffered like that." His eye twitched, and Christer restrained a smirk. _Oh ho. And what have we stumbled upon?_

"Indeed. But while I was sitting there, who should come to my side by Edward, my faithful robot?" He smiled at the recollection. "For hours he played me music and we engaged in conversation—or at least such limited conversation as one can have with an old-model EDY. And it made me think—in the midst of this agony inflected by men in fear of a war carried out by robots, we two had found a sort of peace."

"Poetic," Hoffer agreed. "Maybe it's the scotch, or maybe it's the after effects of being used as a plasma sponge by a berserk security 'bot, but I'm still looking for the connection, Mr. Andersson." Christer could not help but notice that the blond man kept glancing towards the end of the hall where Rockman and his sister seemed to be engaged in some sort of heated debate. _Fascinating_.

Christer stretched to draw attention back to himself. "You see, that day, and the many days afterwards, I considered this situation, and I came to the conclusion that men and women and machines cannot all go their separate paths towards the future—it results only in chaos and discord."

A trio of yellow servbots arrived at the table, bearing their meals. As they lowered plates, cups and silverware to the table, Christer smiled and sent a "good job" message to the 'bots via nanonet. "No, my friends," he continued. "The only way to a future not soaked in blood is _together_. As one. Whether he wished to do so or not, Dr. Light gave birth to the oft-fictioned technological Singularity when his robot twins awoke in a lab last year. We can either fuse with it—become something grand and noble with the help of our steel children, or we can dwindle into obscurity or fear." His cheeks burned.

And he began to outline his plan. As he spoke, the martial artist looked more and more interested, and even Shogun leaned forward over his _soupe de poisson_ and "hmmmed" a few times appreciatively. Of course, he left out the dirtier parts of it—the pogrom against the HSL, the necessary kidnappings, the military coups in places that could not be persuaded.

After all, what were those details in light of the greater good?

When he was done, he sat back, his meal devoured and his mood expansive. Hoffer nodded slowly. "All right. I'm in. I'll get my things together and fly to Stuttgart in a few days. We should be able to start training as soon as next week."

"Perfect," Christer answered, his smile genuine. "And you, Shogun?"

"Lotto," Inafune said quietly. "It is a great risk you take—socially and fiscally." He paused for a moment. "Yet I think I will be proud to help to help you in this grand enterprise you have in mind."

"Then it was worth the loss of a hand to have come to this moment," Christer said, and he meant it.

_Tokyo, Japan_

When Rock arrived back at Dr. Light's house, he was livid.

Another "blank spot" had cropped up in between Roll's departure to speak with Hansel Hoffer and her return. He had spoken with a great number of reporters and their attendant mediabots regarding the recent confrontation. Halfway through, he noticed Maria Eve standing several yards away looking exceptionally sickly—no doubt due to what she would consider a PR debacle for LighTech.

_If I were her, I'd just be happy I wasn't working for Sennet right now_, he had thought sourly.

And then . . . nothing. A grey haze obscured the space of about twenty seconds during which he had meant to respond to a question one of the mediabots squawked about his possible role in training robot police for the Neo Tokyo Synthetic Unit. He passed it off as a power flux due to the fight, and manufactured a sheepish chuckle, but the incident worried him.

A troubling hypothesis generated itself somewhere in his lobar circuitry and threaded its way through impossibly complex self-adjusting positronic relays to his prefrontal matrix. Was it possible that Dr. Light had inadvertently produced a flaw in his creations? It would explain why he and Roll both seemed to suffer from some sort of cognitive dysfunction recently. Since they had both been activated at the same time . . .

_Yes, but she has been online for longer_, he corrected himself. Still, the chances of their system malfunctions occurring as random events that coincidentally occupied the same chronological space ranked significantly lower on his list of possibilities than both of them being . . .

"Broken," he said aloud, softly.

"Rock?" Roll's voice dispelled the reverie, but not he disquieting sensation that had come with it. He needed to speak with Dr. Light as soon as possible. "We need to go to Geneva."

Roll blinked twice. "I just spent ten minutes with an amorous martial artist who beats up robots as a hobby, trying to find a good way to tell him that I'm a robot, and feigning interest in an old holoshow from decades ago. In retrospect, that seems pretty sensible compared to what you want to do."

"I think—Roll, I think we may be _faulty_." He glanced guiltily over his shoulder as he said it, suddenly wishing that he had kept better track of Maria Eve. Thankfully, she had vanished.

His sister's eyes widened. "Faulty? Are you crazy?"

"Maybe." Rock looked her straight in the eye. "I keep blanking out. And you have some sort of behavioral aberration as well. What is there's some sort of defect in our programming or O/S that's only begun to manifest itself over time? A cumulative effect, perhaps."

Roll didn't look entirely convinced, but she seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes. _When did she acquire that emotional quirk?_ Finally, she said quietly, "Maybe that's why you were offline for so long."

"Let's go ask Dr. Light," he said firmly.

"Let's not," she replied. "Let's get back to Tokyo where we have an entire subterranean lab's worth of diagnostic equipment and friends who miss us. We can signal Dr. Light with our concerns when we get there."

Rock rolled his eyes. "That diagnostic equipment didn't find anything wrong with us before."

"Then maybe we don't _have_ any system problems," Roll snapped. "Maybe we just have _personalities_." And she vanished in a line of blue fire.

Rock had followed, and now stood outside of their larger-than-it-looked house, angry. Roll's erratic behavior had begun to chip at his own calm, and he found himself making a fist. _Calm. Just be calm. You've been in a coma for six months, and awake for less than twenty-four hours. There are bound to be some minor system glitches._

He opened the door and found himself immediately knocked off balance by something chest-high and wailing. It took him a fraction of a second to recognize Bess; her physical parameters did not match his internal records.

"You're awake! You're awake, you're awake!" The little girl—larger than he remembered, actually—was weeping uncontrollably and squeezing his thoracic chassis so hard that he actually registered the pressure. "And now they're gonna make me move and this is so _stupid_ and _unfair_!"

Rock stood bewildered for a moment, and then reached gingerly down and patted Bess's head. "Hello, Bess. I'm sorry I slept for so long."

"Were you sick—I mean broken?" the words came out in a phlegmy sniffle. "I tried to help Dr. Light fix you, you know. He was so worried, he didn't sleep for almost a week, and Roll had to yell at him a lot to get him upstairs to bed. Dad said she henpecked him, but that's dumb 'cause robots can't hurt people unless they're _corrupted_, and I know Roll's safe."

Rock smiled. "Let's go inside and you can tell me about it. Is Roll home yet?"

"She got here just before you. She said she had to send a message to Dr. Light about you being awake." Bess had taken a vice grip on his arm which Hansel Hoffer might have respected. "And she said not to let you go _anywhere_, so you gotta stay."

"I'm not going anywhere," Rock answered. "Not for a long time, now. I think I just want to stay home for the next several years, in fact." He tilted his head downwards. "So you said you were helping Dr. Light try to fix me?"

"He said your _positronic matrix_ was just fine." She pronounced the words crisply, as if imitating Dr. Light's elocution. "And when we couldn't fix you, he said to just let you sleep it off, and I could help fix other things that got broken. Are you okay now?"

Rock hoped his grin wasn't tainted by worry. "I think so. Maybe a few system hiccups, but nothing I can't handle." _I hope_.

"That's good, because Dr. Light was afraid your _proprietary heuristics_ model might have been damaged by too much strain." She frowned as Rock sat in a chair in front of her. "But Eddie says not to worry, because when Blues broke the First Law, they were still able to fix him."

Rock froze.

"What? Th-the first . . ."

"Sure." Bess smiled. "A robot always has to do what a human says."

Relief flooded him. "That's the Third Law, Bess. Not the first."

Bess shook her head. "Well, Eddie says that Blues broke the First Law, and Dr. Light and Dr. Wily had to work real hard to fix him, but that he still whistled afterwards. So I'm sure that Dr. Light can fix whatever is wrong with you."

Her smile was a study in trust, and Rock couldn't bring himself to correct her. Instead, he gazed over her shoulder at Roll, who stood in the doorway, mouth agape. Everything had just changed.

_Houston, Texas_

_Nothing has changed—it is all as it was before_.

Mikhael Cossack's stomach gnawed at him with spiteful persistence. His head throbbed and his ears rang. Something stung the corners of his eyes, and he growled at it wordlessly. No curse he could think of in English or Russian seemed adequate to the enormity of his failure.

_Failure. You have failed._ It was a only a matter of time until Dr. Corbun would storm through the door, utter a string of unintelligible Anlgo-Saxon gibberish, and throw him out in disgrace to skulk back to lick his wounds. _Wife dead, daughter lonely, career soon to be in ruins_. He ground out tears with the back of his hand and stood straight.

His first priority, of course, must be to secure his work for any future he might have. His work on the Enforcer unit had been good—some of his best. If he could change it enough to avoid legal troubles with Sennet, he might at least use a modified version for home security, wherever he ended up. The second priority was to shield St. John from repercussions—his employer must never suspect that the Nigerian scientist had been complicit in the failed scheme to embarrass LighTech. It had sounded like Abejide might have problems enough of his own.

_I'll have to destroy some records. After this debacle, it will be little enough to add to my list of firing offenses._ He stood and nearly doubled over as his stomach made a sound like a wounded rabbit and clenched hard. He had taken some of the little yellow pills earlier, but it had been like trying to insulate a 100-watt circuit with a 1-watt resistor.

Straightening more slowly, he took a few steps towards the wreckage of the Enforcer and nearly broke into tears again. The masterpiece of the whole design—the flash bulb embedded in the giant crystal atop the helmet—had been deeply scored by some sort of industrial blade, leading to an arc-overcharge cascade failure. What flaw had led to the Enforcer's defeat? How had LighTech's—_Light's_—lab assistant defeated a purpose-built security bot?

_Fool. Fool! To think that your robot security guard could match the hero of the Robot War!_ He reached into the pocket of his jacket, found a smooth glass surface. He had been saving the flask of whiskey for celebrating Sennet's newfound primacy in the industry. A bitter smirk twisted under his bushy mustache. That possibility was as far beyond reach now as calling back the Enforcer's ill-fated challenge.

Barely a handful of heartbeats had passed before the unscrewed cap nestled in the palm of his hand and a sour warmth had begun to spread through his chest. _Ai, my Kalinka would be ashamed—and I know it will not help my stomach_. Still, it was small enough comfort against the disaster.

He walked towards the main terminal, a plan beginning to heave itself from the fog of failure. Sennet was already a lost cause—his pride had seen to that. Yet he might still salvage something of value from this situation. He hefted the flask and frowned at it, the fierce lines of his face converging into something terrible. How had it become so light already?

Fingers made inexplicably clumsy, he fumbled with a sheaf of datacards. He stopped short as he noticed a shadow shambling gracelessly through the hallway towards the Sennet pavilion. His eyes narrowed in his ursine face as he recognized the inebriated form of Maria Eve. An inchoate growl snarled through his chest and up his throat.

"Ah!" She saw him and gestured with a bottle of her own. "Mik_hael_ Cossack! 'Scuse me—_Doctor_ Cossack! 'S a funny name when you thinkuvit. Be like me bein' named _Eve Cowboy_." She sneered as she moved closer. "Whatja thinkuv my plan? Worked great, din' it?" The sibilant slur that her voice had become made her words almost unintelligible. She tore a dangling shoe form her heel and glared at it. "Stupid," she muttered. "_Sstupid little girl._ Never get anything right."

"Now what?" Cossack sighed, the flame of his anger suddenly doused by cold misery. "I am ruined."

"Hnnnh." A somewhat bilious-sounding grunt folded her. Cossack made a show of ignoring her discomfort, instead eyeing a readout of one of his old projects—its sphinx-like silhouette blurred by stinging doubt. When her wave of nausea had apparently passed, he swirled the remainder of his expensive whiskey about. The metallic sloshing sound was oddly comforting.

"What about you? It seems your job is in the parody, yes?"

"_Jeopardy_," she corrected him. "I don't see why it would be. _Sennet_ made an unauth'rized attack upon LighTech property at an Omnitech dem'nstration."

A rock had congealed within Cossack's stomach. "And suppose I were to tell LighTech of your involvement in this . . . issue?"

Eve laughed at that—a cynical, grating cackle. "Oh sssshure. A senior exec'tive of LighTech told you to sabotage our most famous piece of equipment so that your market share can skyrock't. Thasssz believeable. Now 'scuse me, _Doctor_, I gotta go." And with that, she stumbled out of sight, a sobbing hiccup trailing behind her. Mikhael Cossack glared after her, his rage boiling. If he must depart Sennet Robotics, he would not do so quietly. Nor would his fall from grace be solitary.

He took a last swig of whiskey and set to work.

_Palma, Spain_

Consuela's heart fluttered.

Thick, dark eyebrows hung heavily upon a face that could be generously described as "horselike." A long, straight nose pointed to a mouth that by its lines clearly preferred frowns to smirks. The man who had identified himself as Johann Freder reached his hand out solemnly to shake hers. She noted with revulsion that its last two fingers had been replaced by metallic prosthetics.

"Miss Alvarez," he said, his voice as cheerless as his visage, "Thank you for agreeing to meet with me." The thick Germanic consonants were overlaid with smooth Castilian as her nanophone implant auto-translated. It was not entirely necessary—after all, one of the reasons she had been selected to work with Dr. Wily was that she spoke German and English as well—though not nearly as well as her native Basque or Castilian. "Though the Sons of Light are a small organization, we believe that our cause is just, and we look forward to the good we may do with your help."

"Of course," she replied, the words burning like vinegar. To share space with a man who doubtless believed that humanity would be better as a servant to mechanical devils unnerved her more than she cared to admit. What would she do if he saw through her ruse? "I am glad of a chance to give back to the works and ideals of Dr. Light."

He gestured to the stacks and computers around them. "And what better place to discuss the future of humanity than in a repository of its greatest knowledge?"

Truth be told, Consuela had chosen the library as a meeting place because it was public. Should she suddenly find herself in danger, a dozen people might be on hand to summon aid. Amidst the antique paper books and the modern datacards of this quiet haven, she willed herself to relax. _He cannot possibly know of the plan—he is simply here to serve his part_.

"Yes," she smiled. "I have always loved libraries." That at least was no ploy—though her own library at home consisted of a Network connection, a comfortable chair, and a few dedicated datacards, she still equated the atmosphere with the comforts and safety of her days at the University. Here and there, robots whirred back and forth—either upon frictionless wheels or in the air—as they stewarded priceless books to their climate-controlled static-shield shelves or polished the tables for the dozenth time that day. Consuela suppressed a sour twist of the mouth.

"So, to business, then," the dour German said. "Since it was you who contacted us, I will assume that I need not bore you with the purpose of our society. I hope, however, that you will forgive my presumption in asking a few questions of you."

_Here it comes. Breathe_. "Please. I wouldn't want you to be uncomfortable with any arrangement we make. Ask any questions you have." She smiled inwardly—it was a phrase smooth enough to have come from her old self.

"_Danke_." It was thickly enough accented that her implant took a moment puzzling over it before the translation came through. "I understand that you work as a speech therapist at the Palma Maximum Security Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and that your contact with Dr. Wily is on a daily basis."

"Yes, at least."

"How would you say his condition has developed?"

Consuela blinked—she had expected questions about scheduling and guard rotation, not therapeutic analysis. "His speech has improved by bits. He still transposes words occasionally, and his neologisms grow less pronounced." She sighed. "He is a frustrating man, sometimes. But I believe he is sorry for actions." _And I hate him for it_.

"Sorry?" Freder's eyebrows rose. "You feel he is close to full rehabilitation, then?"

"I hope," she answered simply. _Then his punishment will be all the sweeter._

"Well. And you suggest to us that you can help us to get him out of his prison." He leaned forward. "Why do you suppose we would want this?"

She worked her tongue free of its place stuck to the roof of her mouth. "I . . . I do not know, sir." _Think, think!_ "I know why I would want him gone, though."

"'Gone' you say, not 'free.'" He steepled his fingers, his dark gaze locking on some point in the distance. "Why, Miss Alvarez? Why would you want him gone?"

"I tire of him. Every day I see him, I recall that it is his fault that my parents are dead. That my sleep is troubled with terrible nightmares. That our world can never be what it once was." She took a shuddering breath. "I don't want him at my facility."

"Revenge?" Quietly spoken, but clearly.

"No." It felt a blasphemy to say so, but she continued. "Revenge will not bring my parents back. But I can give my _abuelo_ a happier life if I do not need to wait upon the madman who ruined mine."

"We want to bring him back, Miss Alvarez," Freder replied. "The man in your expensive prison is a broken thing, but the Sons of Light remember that LighTech was the child of _two_ minds—that Light and Wily were allies and friends for many years before they were adversaries." He leaned forward. "You want Dr. Wily the devil to leave you in peace, and we want Dr. Wily the Saint to return to us from wherever he has been taken."

"How could you do that?" she asked, incredulous. _This man and his people are surely mad—madder than I gave them, credit for._

"We have the technology." Freder's fingers twitched, and something approaching a smile fought to emerge on his mournful features. The withered thing it actually became made Consuela wince. "Have you ever heard of the Bell Initiative?"

"No."

"Experimental technology that was killed in the research phase. It has taken the Sons of Light many months to find even the faintest trace of its existence. Yet we believe that with it, we can not only heal the scars upon Dr. Wily's brain, but to bring him back to his old self entirely." He cocked his head. "Would that not be a great thing for our world?"

_A great thing would be to see the old maniac dangling by his innards from my front gate_. "Yes it would, Mr. Freder. A great thing indeed. I hope only that your associates succeed where Dr. Delgato has failed."

"Delgato?" The name elicited a surprised jerk of the eyebrows. "_Javier _Delgato?"

"_Si_, Mr. Freder. He is my sponsor, now. Do you know him?"

"He is . . . known to us." Dark eyes glared into space for a few more moments. "It is of no concern. Now, Miss Alvarez, we have established that you wish to help us. I will tell you what we need, and you can tell me what you may do."

Consuela smiled. The League would see her worth when she delivered Dr. Wily to them on a gilt plate. Maneuvering these misguided zealots into the hands of the just would only increase her standing amongst the Human Supremacy League.

And she would finally be able to sleep through the night.

_Geneva, Switzerland_

Evening had fallen by the time Dr. Light arrived back in Geneva, his mind made up. The stairway assembled itself beneath his feet with a sound like a thousand metallic beetles as he descended from the jet. An oily, tangy smell clung to the tarmac, marring the ancient beauty of the crepuscular stars. Peter Cheever and Terrance Post stood near the base of the stairs, marring the dubious beauty of the tarmac. Cheever's omnipresent swarm of servbots juggled a constellation of confections nearby while the big man twisted his hands nervously.

The _pianissimo_ tap of his toe touching the ground signaled the beginning of a dissonant duet by his two supposed legal advisors. Even with a master linguist's ear, it was difficult for him to separate their agitated voices from one another as their twinned displeasure echoed across the runway.

"—going to declare a state of emergency—"

"—called for an immediate stockholder meeting—"

"—utter disaster, shouldn't have discharged _weapons_ in public—"

"—trying to do some damage control with Corbun—"

"—Mears is gloating like the bloody cat that got the cream—"

Both voices joined together. "And you didn't answer our calls!"

Light pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. _Patience. They mean well_.

"Gentlemen. I have had an exceptionally trying day, as well you know." The palm of his hand curtly stifled their dual intakes of breath. "I have just spoken with the man who was once a genius and one of my closest friends and found him to be a shattered husk of a human being. I haven't had anything to eat for ten hours. Prioritize."

He held up a pair of fingers. "You have two minutes to give me the most salient points—intelligibly. I suggest you split your time evenly between you. After that, I am walking away from this conversation and to the closest quiet restaurant that I can find." He activated his nanophone implant to begin a search for just such a place.

"Begin."

As loquacious as both had been moments ago, both Post and Cheever spent their first few valuable seconds performing a passable imitation of a goldfish recently removed from its bowl. Cheever was the first to recover.

"See here, Light—"

"One-fifty."

"All right, blast it!" The special liaison's nose twitched comically, and he waved a dismissive hand at his flock of 'bots. "Listen, General Mears has renewed his suit against you in the past few hours. Your pet humanoids got—well, shall we say _embroiled_ in a situation in Houston. Nobody was hurt, but Rockman used weapons in public, and Mears has jumped on it." He took a breath—the first since he had begun. "_And_ he says there's some evidence of a rogue 'bot of yours terrorizing the New Shirewick installation months ago."

Light thought of interjecting, thought better of it. His mind raced.

"Rock was in Houston?"

"Does this cut into my minute?"

"No. Just—what was he doing there?" Light took a steadying breath. _And how is he? I should have been there when he woke_. "Was he with Roll?"

"I've got footage," Post interjected. "It's been all over the Network."

"All right. We'll get to that. Post, your turn."

Cheever squawked in indignation. His servbots instantly flocked closer, crowding him solicitously. He distractedly snagged a candy bar from within the moving cloud of steel and plastic while Post spoke.

"Simply put, the Board has taken the events in Houston rather . . . ambivalently. Half are cheering your incredible shrewdness in undercutting Sennet's security display, and the other half are calling for an immediate shutdown of all your humanoid O/S until such time as they can be closely examined." Post smoothed his muddy hair. "And Mears' allegations about the New Shirewick incident are . . . troubling."

Light sighed.

"All right. I can see tonight is going to get any better. His implant _pinged_ pleasantly and indicated a nearby Italian restaurant. Light booked a reservation for three and glanced at his _de facto_ dinner mates. "Let's get dinner and you can tell me all about it."

"Doctor, I will be blunt," Post continued, holding up a stalling hand. "I'm not entirely certain that the board is wrong."

"Wrong?" Something tight settled behind his left eye and began to tug slowly but unremittingly on the cord of his patience, a child jerking at the collar of a misbehaved dog. "Explain yourself, Mr. Post." Somehow, a brittle edge had worked its way into his voice without his consent.

Terrence Post flicked his gaze nervously to Cheever, as if seeking—what? Help? Approval? But the special liaison's attention had turned entirely to munching resentfully on his candy bar and making low sounds in his throat like a grumpy manatee

"Well . . . here it is. There has been a lot of talk about the speed with which you have advanced the field of robotics and artificial intelligence recently." Post took a breath. "Not all of it is positive. Now wait, let me finish. Your work with Blues was a leap beyond anything the world had ever seen, and with Rockman and Roll, even more so. However, there have been some unsettling reports about both of them in recent weeks."

Light cranked a vice on his tone to keep the anger from it. "Go on."

"Roll has been behaving in an . . . unpredictable, emotionally volatile manner." The lawyer looked almost ashamed to say it. "Our psychologists have looked at the records, and a team of programming experts have determined that—based upon your original adaptive programming—her behavior is unlikely to be a malfunction."

"Disregarding for the moment the fact that you have just admitted to monitoring my home—violating any number of privacy invasion laws—what business is it of yours whether my—" He took a breath. "Whether Roll has been acting strangely of late?"

"You were about to say _my daughter_, weren't you?" Post gave Light a look that might have been pity, but ultimately resolved into something more enigmatic. "It is our business, Dr. Light, because the Board is afraid—and not without reason—that you have singlehandedly created the technological Singularity."

_Well, then. It was bound to come to this_.

"That is not an entirely groundless belief," he answered carefully.

"Hah!" Cheever had finished his chocolate and threw his hands up, disturbing one of his closer servbots. "The man creates a pair of super-powered robot twins who _laugh_ at the bloody Turing Test as if it were less than an inconvenience, and the Board's belief is 'not entirely groundless.'"

Light massaged his temples as a pastiche of video streams showcasing Rock's brief battle with the Sennet Enforcer robot glazed across his vision via implant. A cold weight had settled in his stomach, nearly cancelling the insistent growling for pasta puttanesca.

A host of rejoinders had already formed in his mind, but rather than give them voice, he stood silently, listening to the sound of the jet idling and the swarm of microbots behind him adjusting in their stairway configuration. A muted clattering accompanied the steps retracting and reforming themselves. Light suddenly envisioned a humanoid robot built from hundreds—perhaps thousands—of swarm-microbots. It was such a fascinating train of thought that the pulse of sapphire light that the clouds spat onto the pavement didn't surprise him at first.

"Bloody damn!"

Cheever's voice rang out. "Eve! What the hell—?"

Light's blood ran cold. Standing in front of them was Maria Eve, motes of light dancing from her skin as tangibly as the reek of alcohol that surrounded her like a nimbus. The residual luminescence of teleportation slowly bled away, and she glared at Light. Her eyes had glazed over, and a single hand clawed at the air.

"Sssstupid grrrrrl," she slurred, before slumping to the ground.

_Unknown_

They seemed familiar.

He shifted his lucky charm on its shoulder strap and gazed at them intently. Whatever they were doing, their focus was absolute. A pack of them had gathered around a single huddling form, and they chittered excitedly. Their yellow helmet-carapaces made a molten sheen of the setting sunlight.

The Broken Man frowned. He had seen these before.

"Metool," he muttered. It sounded right. He took a hesitating step towards the group of them. "Metool?" he asked.

They didn't turn around, but the creature at the center of their cluster thrashed wildly.

"Help!"

An imperative spike drilled through him—his arm had shifted and jerked towards the metools before his voluntary actuators had time to register any command. The air winced and roiled in front of him, and before he had time to process the sequence of overrides, a hissing shriek of ripping super-heated atmosphere vanished in the wake of a shining bolt streaking towards the nearest metool.

The force of the blast tore the robot's right foot assembly away and sent it caroming off a nearby rock formation. It landed with a solid _thunk _in the soil and twitched uselessly for several seconds. His plasma buster had already targeted a second metool as the import of the first robot's damage pattern struck him. _Burst-proof shells. I should have remembered that_.

This time, he blasted the ground underneath the frontal arc of the pack of metools, sending them hurling through the air. _Like popcorn_. The dissonant thought nearly unbalanced him; he couldn't even recall what popcorn _was_, other than it had made somebody happy.

And apparently, it flew through the air in interesting patterns.

The shape at the center of the knot of yellow construction 'bots revealed itself to be a huddled human being, covered in lacerations and burns. Its—_his_—arms had knotted themselves over his head and neck in angles of quivering misery, and the remaining metools jabbed and prodded at it with extended claws and plasma welders alike.

_No. No, no, no_. It was wrong. Unbearably wrong, and the Broken Man dashed forward, striking and kicking at the renegade machines with berserker strength, until the last of them had been smashed, thrown or blasted away. At the center of the ring of wreckage he crouched, his lips curled in a lupine snarl. His imperative programming shut itself down, and he suddenly became aware of several plasma burns to his limbs and torso, as well as a few penetrating wounds to his syntheflesh.

The injured human whimpered.

"Hey," the Broken Man said. Meant to sound reassuring, the words ground from his voice synthesis module with all the mellow clarity of a raven's croak. His would-be protectee scrambled backwards on injured limbs, hissing with pain and fumbling over the smoking remains of shattered metools.

"It's okay, I'm a friend," he said. At least, he meant to. However, in his fatigued state, what energy reserves he possessed had been rerouted to critical functions. So while his auto-repair system flooded his limbs with microprobes to knit syntheflesh and repair broken struts, his verbal output package produced a vaguely menacing growl of "Ffrieeend!"

A self-deprecating smirk twisted his features. He couldn't have _planned_ to appear more threatening. As expected, the injured man put as much distance between himself and his shambling, muttering robot savior as possible, despite his hurts. The Broken Man sat down on the helmet of a broken metool and chuckled. His lucky charm had been stained with oil smears and spattered coolant. He glanced around for something he could use as a cleaning rag, came up disappointed, and sneered.

_Well, that will teach me to do a good deed._

More curious than unnerved, he moved towards the closest of the destroyed metools. Robots were not supposed to attack human beings—of _that_ much he was certain, at least. That so many of them had gathered to do so bespoke a guiding agency behind them; even at their optimal work cohesion, metools rarely linked up with more than three others of their kind to work on a single task. For a dozen to unite in common cause against a human indicated a fundamental program error—or modification—in two critical areas.

_Who would want to repurpose low-level laboroids for anti-human violence?_

Slowly, so as not to overtax his already-complaining repair circuits, he bent and lifted the remains of a metool, its cartoonish face caved in by something the shape of his foot. He looked for a long minute at the corporate logo inscribed on the inside of the helmet: a stylized capital "L" within a circle.

Beneath that, the company's name—and presumably the malefactors who had, for some reason, sent a squad of robots to attack a defenseless man in the middle of . . . wherever this was.

_LighTech. So my enemy's name is LighTech._

The Broken Man hitched his lucky charm over his shoulder and began to follow the trail left by the injured human being. He needed some answers.

_Geneva, Switzerland_

The flashing lights of the ambulance receded down the tarmac as it hovered hastily towards the hospital, throwing errant sparkling pools of red and blue against the distant buildings. Dr. Light watched it go, and mentally tagged the nearest emergency neurology center. Human teleportation remained a dangerous proposition if one didn't wish to end with half their brain displaced or thousands of micro-strokes dotting the hemispheres. Why would Maria Eve do that to herself?

The immediately obvious answer seemed less than satisfactory: that she had accidentally managed to activate a sophisticated piece of restricted equipment in her inebriated state and teleport directly to her employer's location across the globe. Perhaps she had been coerced or forced to use the device—but by whom? And what would there be to gain from such an act? How had she found a teleporter and disabled its organic alarm?

Less urgently, why had she been so stumbling drunk?

He had been able to provide little enough information to the physician and his assistant in the ambulance when they arrived; though he had accessed her medical records through his nanophone implant, they appeared to have been recently and heavily redacted—a troubling fact in and of itself. Terrence Post was already on the line with Dr. Delgato in Palma—he now being one of the leading authorities in the world concerning the damage sustained from teleporter use. Peter Cheever kept mumbling obscenities and wiping his suddenly pale face. His swarm of servbots seemed less peppy than usual, having exhausted themselves trying to hoist the inert Maria Eve onto the ambulance stretcher before the flustered medical staff and their attendant medroids had taken over.

"Big deal, innit?" the fat man said. "Sending a doctor, I mean. They must have _really_ been worried, yeah?"

Light batted absently at the air. "The Franco-German model of emergency medical service _always _sends a physician on the ambulance—not like the Anglo-American system of paramedics and EMT's."

"Still, though—"

"What do you want me to say, Cheever?" his voice sounded bone weary, even to himself. "We'll see that she's looked after and given the best care possible. You know LighTech takes exceptional care of its employees."

"I just . . ." Peter Cheever looked exceptionally miserable. "She hired me, you know. She was the first one to give me a chance after . . . well, 's not important. The thing is, it just bothered me, seeing her like that." He shrugged as Light turned to him. "Don't get me wrong, everyone's got a right to get pissed once in a while, but she was—"

"Uncharacteristically intoxicated?" Light interrupted.

"You might say that." Cheever swallowed. "See here, Light. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but how about that food? I could do with a bit of a sit down just now."

Dr. Light cast a long look at the last reflection of the departing ambulances hovering lights. "Starving won't help her, and we have much to discuss." He motioned to Post, who nodded and fell into step behind him. Light's nanophone implant chirped, and a text-only message from Roll flashed in his lower field of vision.

_Emergency. Rock is awake, and angry. Me, too. Angelwoods moving out in two days. Programming abnormalities appearing. Come home immediately_.

_Eating. Go to hell_, he was tempted to reply. But instead, gritted his teeth. _Stand by. Go into stasis if necessary to prevent further aberrations. Will advise_.

The textual silence that followed seemed tinged with resentment, though that might have been his imagination. The walk to the restaurant was short and gave him time to think, though Peter Cheever's constant nervous chatter seemed almost calculated to make that difficult.

Their arrival at the restaurant went thankfully unnoticed, and Light took pains to slowly consume his pasta. Both the human waiter and the servbot repeatedly suggested excellent wines to go with the meal, but with Maria Eve's condition to close to mind, he couldn't make himself so much as sip at the pre-war Sauvignon Blanc.

_And Maria Eve's unexpected teleporter issue is just one of my problems_. Mears' Advanced Robosoldier Program, Blues' apparent involvement in a string of unexplained incidents across southern Asia, Roll's developing personality quirks, Rock's suddenly-ended coma . . .

_And Will_. Always, it came back to William Albert Wily and what he had done.

_What _we_ did._ Though calculated to wound and coming from a dangerously unbalanced and delusional mind, Wily's accusations had not been completely baseless. _God, what if it's true? What if we just paved the way for humanity to exterminate itself? Maybe they weren't ready for what we gave them._

He knew better, of course. Rock and Roll didn't represent the technological Singularity that the Board feared they did. However, their successors might. And the generation after _that_ . . . it would be soon. Sooner than anybody would have predicted. Ten years at the most if Light didn't put the brakes on it.

_But should I?_

"I'm sorry, I was busy digesting," he replied as Terrence Post nudged him.

Cheever grunted. "Busy formulating a politic answer in that cosmos-sized brain of yours, you mean." He reached for a toothpick and instead ended up with another breadstick in his hand. "I _said_, let's deal with the situation in Houston first. What's your angle?"

"Cosmos," Light mused aloud. Four bewildered eyes scrutinized him across the table as if he had just answered a calculus equation with a color. He shrugged. "From the Greek _kosmos_, meaning 'orderly, well-arranged.' In that way, it's an antonym for chaos. Perhaps that's the key here."

"For those of us at the table with fewer than three doctorates, perhaps you'd clarify," Cheever muttered.

Light stood and began to pace in front of the booth, much to the consternation of the servbots in the aisle. "It may be that the key to Roll's psychological state is a conflict between the fundaments of her programming and the emotive subroutines I wrote." He paused and narrowed his eyes. _No. Will wrote those, didn't he?_ "It follows that the easiest solution is to remove the emotive subroutines. That, of course, is unacceptable."

"Of course," Post agreed tonelessly. "However, if we could return to—"

"Her logical interactivity matrices find themselves at odds with the emotive and behavioral emulation software," Light continued, waving the lawyer's words away. "Once in a while, they cancel each other out, like waves of inverted amplitude. But when they're not perfectly synchronized . . ." He trailed off, his eyes widening.

The nearby diners had fallen silent, eyes glued upon the agitated foreigner.

"If they're not perfectly synchronized, then the result is a paradoxical _amplification_ of the waves from time to time as they reinforce one another." He turned to the table swiftly and pushed Post and Cheever's plates to the edge, leaving an expanse of white linen tablecloth. Cheever made a garbled noise of alarm, and his swarm of servbots rushed to catch his platter of linguine before it splattered on his ample tweed jacket. Light ignored them and pulled a holopen from his pocket, rapidly tracing glowing equations and diagrams in the air just above the tablecloth.

His two dinner-mates sat silent and transfixed by the mathematical wizardry taking place before them. Like a conjurer, the robotologist traced glyphs and symbols in the air, layers upon layers of them stacking and running into one another. He scribbled waves of various frequency and amplitude, periodically muttering to himself and clicking the back of the pen to change the color of the holographic strokes in the air. A multicolored latticework of braided, twisted wave functions, tethered to equations composed as much of Greek letters as numerals hovered above the cooling pasta and half-empty wine glasses.

"There," he whispered, his eyes fixed on the troubling results of his work: an irrational number trailing into ghostly infinity and pulsing with the angry throb of a tachycardic heart above a snarled loop in the spiraling wave functions.

Post cleared his throat. "I majored in law," he said quietly. "What is it that we're looking at, Dr. Light?"

"The sum of an unbalanced remainder," Light replied, his mouth twisting sardonically underneath a bushel of white whiskers. "A logical contradiction of significant enough magnitude to effectively shut down any computer other than a quantum calculation device." His eyes stung as he swiped the calculations clear. "I believe that answers one question, gentlemen."

"If you say it does," Post answered doubtfully. "Would you care to resume your seat, sir? The tiramisu should be on its way shortly, and we really _should_ discuss the situation in Houston."

Light drew breath to answer, found himself preempted by an alarmed string of beeps in his nanophone implant. By the sudden expression of surprise on both Cheever's and Post's faces, they had received similar alerts.

"Go," barked Light, tapping his ear.

"Gentlemen," a nervous voice said, "this is Sally Nunez." She did not add her title—each of the men at the table had met Maria Eve's sometime rival and head of R&D 6. _Next in seniority after Eve_, Light realized.

"Go ahead, Mrs. Nunez," Cheever said affably.

"We just received a call from the UE consolidated command." She sounded as pleased to be delivering the news as if she were making funeral arrangements. "The head of the SIRA task force has contacted us with news of an outbreak of robot violence near Nokaneng, led by a new Robot Master."

"Impossible," Post and Cheever snapped in unison.

"Who is the Robot Master?" Light asked.

"Unknown at this time, but General Mears was quite certain that the unit reported by eyewitnesses was a LighTech humanoid model—perhaps an upgraded KIF."

"Mears?" Light frowned. "What does _he_ have to do with SIRA?" As he asked, his nanophone implant drew up a profile of the general, and Light's heart sank. The leading advocate of the Advanced Robosoldier Program and Light's chief adversary in the UE tribunals was also listed as the head of the Synthetic Insurrection and Revolt Awareness task force.

"So Wily's sleeper cells have begun to wake," Post answered crisply. "All the more reason to quickly exonerate Dr. Light of his part in this unfortunate business and to let Rockman go back to work."

Light's stomach lurched at the thought.

"We've also been receiving requests from the Advanced Robosoldier Program for information about one of your unproduced prototypes," Nunez continued. "They've recently been upgraded to an alpha priority."

Cheever chuckled nervously. "Criminy, woman! I haven't even had dessert yet!"

_What else could possibly go wrong?_

The door to the restaurant swung open, and three men in immaculate charcoal suits strode in lockstep towards the table. "Dr. Light," the first one said in accented but flawless English, "You are under arrest."

_Geneva, Switzerland_

The courtroom was far more crowded than it had been just a few days ago.

Thomas Light smoothed the lines of his expensive suit for the dozenth time in as many minutes and nervously adjusted his silken tie. Judge Heinrickson had not yet entered the room, though both counselors had already taken their seats. Agitation had propelled Light to his feet far too often in the past few minutes for him to take any thoughts of sitting seriously.

Across the room, separated from Light by a throng of mediabots, human reporters, UE personnel, and conspicuously unobtrusive security staff, General Troy Mears sat straight-backed and confident in his appointed seat, overshadowing his neighbors. A sudden lance of anger stabbed Light, and he began to stride towards his legal adversary.

Terrance Post's voice said something unimportant and alarmed. Light ignored him. The crowd parted slowly until he reached the general. Though doubtless aware of Light's approach, he did not deign to acknowledge him until the older man was almost within arm's length.

"General Mears," Light said quietly.

"Doctor Light," the general answered.

"I would like an explanation for your repeated attacks both upon the company I helped to establish, and upon myself personally." Light's voice was remarkably level.

"I believe I had made myself clear," Mears replied. "It is a matter of legal record."

"Law is often the tool by which personal agendas are advanced," Light countered, "As you are no doubt aware, I have taken part in many legal proceedings in my life. Few were of purely procedural nature." He arched an eyebrow. "Were you familiar with Daniel Grevis?"

The corner of Mear's left eye twitched—a barely perceptible motion.

_Good. I have his attention._

"You are a highly intelligent man, Doctor Light," Mears answered, his tone unflappable. "Of course, you must have already discovered, Daniel Grevis was an early mentor of mine. It was truly a shame that his convictions led him to such a deplorable path."

_You have no idea_. Light frowned.

"Indeed it was. I take you for a man of solid conviction as well, General." Light held his palms up. "What I don't understand is why you have chosen to direct your ire against me."

Mears turned and looked Light full in the face for the first time. "You are dangerous, Doctor. You and your inventions have pushed humanity to a desperate brink, and you don't even perceive the risk you have taken." He took a deep breath. "Like many brilliant academics before you, you have become so focused on the possibility of what you _can_ accomplish that you have never stopped to consider whether you _should_. I am here to ensure that your work is used responsibly, and to stop you—if necessary—from giving humanity enough rope to hang itself."

_He actually believes it. Arrogant, misguided . . ._

He shook his head slowly. "You're wrong," he said simply. "Your heart is in the right place, General, but your conclusions and methods are flawed."

A bitter smirk creased Mears' features. "Spoken like a true man of science. If you truly understood my motivations, Doctor, you would not have used the term 'heart.' You built a gun, Doctor Light. You built a gun without considering that men might put bullets in it. You have a mind possibly unmatched by any other man alive, but you do not understand the use to which hands will put your works."

"There can be no understanding between the mind that dreams and the hands that achieve without the heart to mediate," Light replied. "Storytellers understood that in 1927; it should not be a difficult concept to grasp these many years later."

"Sentimental nonsense," Mears answered. "This conversation is finished, Doctor."

Light returned to his seat grimly. _Well, I learned what I set out for; there can be no compromise with a man so unshakably convinced of his own rightness._ Terrance Post and Peter Cheever eyed Light reproachfully as he sat, but said nothing.

The opening proceedings were dull, but Light gave them his full attention. Counselor Prochazka precisely and damningly laid out the charges for which Light had been arrested last night: to wit, the activation of a unit of metools near Nokaneng for the purpose of synthetic terrorism.

Light listened disbelieving as she presented evidence of his involvement; restricted security codes known only to top-level LighTech personnel. Other than himself, only Maria Eve, Sally Nunez and Jeroenr Mitsotakis had access to these codes outside of the Board of Directors. With everybody else's communications accounted for, the accusatory finger pointed to Dr. Light's untraceable personal nanophone. In addition, some of the metools recovered from the scene of an attack had been of the newest line—far too recently manufactured to have been susceptible to Wily's reprogramming of months past.

_Wily_. Paranoia struck viper-quick. _He had the codes, too. _Of course, the possibility was absurd. Wily had no access to the sort of equipment necessary for remote-activation and reassignment of several squads of laboroids.

_Sabotage, then_. Mears stood to benefit most directly from these attacks, but by the look on his face, he was as outraged as Light to hear of the events in Africa. _Who else would benefit from my incarceration and a precipitous dip in LighTech stock?_ _Well, all of my competitors, for a start._

Attempting to obtain a list of suspected industrial saboteurs by looking at his many competitors in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence would leave him guessing all day and looking over his shoulder for years. Just as likely, this was the result of a personal grudge.

"Dr. Light," Judge Heinrickson said after a small hoverbot moved to the front of the room and delivered a quiet message, "We will adjourn for recess. You have some visitors."

Light raised an eyebrow, turned around.

Rock and Roll stood at the end of the aisle, arms folded in identical expressions of fury.

_Not now_. _Not in front of all of the United Earth Council and the gathered press of the planet_. Light suppressed a tired sigh and instead let his honest relief at Rock's awakening drift to the forefront of his mind.

"Rock! Roll! What are you doing here?" he asked, walking towards them. They looked at each other, blue eyes meeting in some silent understanding.

"I know you told us to stay home and go into stasis if we needed," Rock began, "But I've had enough of that for a while. And we need to talk. Now."

Terrance Post's breath hissed between his teeth, and the crowd buzzed. Cheever had come up behind Light. "Get them out of here, Light! They'll compromise your defense!"

Light silently agreed. Though the trial for his involvement in the Robot War was still technically on hold while these new charges were addressed, the robot twins' arrival and behavior in an autonomous manner would damage his chances for protecting them from Mears' rapacious notions of military entitlement.

"I'll handle it," he muttered, brushing the fat Brit back.

"You'll _handle_ it?" Roll's voice was almost a screech of indignation. "We can't speak to our _father_ now without his consulting with a team of pet lawyers?"

The crowd's buzz became a confused chorus of murmurs. Light's pace quickened. "Be quiet, Roll. This is not the time or place for that kind of display." He fought to keep his voice cold.

She flinched as if slapped, then reddened.

_Perfect. Just what I need. Just what _we _need._

"That 'kind of display' is exactly why we're here," Rock said. Light had felt Arctic winds with more warmth than the android's tone. "We're having fundamental problems, and we need your help."

"Be quiet," Light hissed as he finally drew even with the twins. "You don't know how damaging this could be!"

"We're broken," Roll growled. "_Broken_, both of us. Or maybe all_ three_ of us."

"And you knew it, didn't you?" Rock added.

_No no no. _His pulse throbbed in his temples. His breath was short.

"Be. Silent. That is an order, you two."

Rock glared at him, as if he were a stranger. Roll had begun to shake.

Finally, Rock snapped. "You should have ordered Eddie to be silent, too."

_Eddie? What on Earth—?_

"We know about Blues," Rock said, voice strangely flat. "What he did. We're afraid—"

"Enough!" Light's voice rang in the suddenly quiet courtroom. Every eye and lens had swiveled to his eclectic, apparently dysfunctional family. His chest heaved. "Enough, Rock. Get out. Wait in a conference room, and we'll continue this _in private_!"

Roll's eyes swam with something glistening. How could that possibly . . . ?

"You want us to keep quiet?" Rock exploded. "We're _broken_! Eddie just told us that Blues _killed—_"

Dread suffused Light, and he activated the code he had hoped never to use. Rock's voice cut off mid-sentence, echoing in the brittle silence of a thousand ears. Both Rock and Roll suddenly slumped: marionettes with their strings jerked, as Thomas Light transmitted their emergency shut-off codes via narrow-band radio burst from his nanophone. Their eyes glassy, the twins stood gracelessly in the middle of the aisle.

He had throttled their autonomy.


End file.
